Who's Joel Osteen?

Instead of meatier blogging about words and writing, books keep hijacking this blog. Now comes a story in the NY Times about a $13 million book deal, Religious Broadcaster Gets Rich Contract for Next Book.

The contract does not adhere to usual format, with the author receiving an advance on future royalties and the royalty rate set at 15 percent of the cover price of each book sold. Rather, the Osteen contract is known in the industry as a co-publishing agreement, with the author receiving a smaller advance--perhaps $1 million to $2 million--but then being entitled to receive 50 percent of the publisher's profit on sales.

Estimates of the value of the contract come from outside sources. More than just the one book, Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential is involved. It's the follow-on to his Your Best Life Now published in 2004 by Warner Faith. It sold more than three million hardcover copies, along with more than one million other products.

Now, this deal I can understand. The author already has a huge platform just in his 30,000-member home church. Then there's his televangelist network, the whole Christian market, and combined with the continuing popularity of the book/subsidiaries' message of self-help, success seems assured. This man could self-publish and make a mint of money! [books]