1) I would assume that a pastor who wants to pursue publishing of sermons preached at church has a positive and constructive relationship with that church currently. And transparency/disclosure/collaboration would not only be ideal, but that the pastor would fully engage in this manner.

2) My guess would be that most church leadership and the pastor could come to a mutual agreement about financial considerations for this. In fact, the church may be willing to underwrite the upfront costs of self-publishing.

3) The profits of self-publishing are typically so small that this is not an issue. Publishing sermons would typically be toward spreading the Word vs. financial profit.

There are other issues on the table of course…thanks for the note/reminder on this issue! I'm sure many pastors would benefit from knowing about this.

And you're right about the profit angle. Though it's important to note, any revenues generated by book sales don't have to end up in the author's pocket. They can certainly be sunk back into the church, used for charitable purposes, or reinvested to further share one's message.

It should also be pointed out that revenue from book sales is often quite minimal — especially for a first offering while one is still building a platform. Like business leaders and other professionals, pastors often see the greatest value in self-publishing on the back end — reaching more people, sharing their messages, building a community.

At a minimum, as you mentioned, repurposing sermon content is a great place to start.

Rather, I think if there were some solid examples of how publishing would help further a pastor's vision for his ministry, it would be helpful. Your original mention of publishing sermons is a great idea. Some others I can think of off the top of my head are compilation of sermons based on a specific theme (such as parenting), series (perhaps going through a specific book of the Bible), concerning specific characters (women of the Bible?), etc are initial thoughts. The church recipe cookbook is another great idea which has longevity, fund-raising capabilities and ability to have relevance/reach beyond the local church, especially if you are part of an ethnic-centric church and can pull together specific genres of recipes. Devotionals would be another great idea - pull together 30 short essays to guide people through Bible study and you have 1-month devotional book! If it is well received, you have found a repeatable format to pursue. In the end, somehow re-purposing all the great sermon content a pastor generates weekly would be a great place to start.

Indeed Thomas Nelson, a traditional publisher, recently launched a self-publishing arm. That’s precisely my point: “the lines between approaches are increasingly blurred.” When you start seeing traditional publishers getting into the self-publishing game, you know the industry is experiencing a seismic shift.

In choosing a self-publishing service provider, just make sure you know what you are getting for your money. If you are the one funding the project, it’s only fair that you should keep all the profit from book sales. But make no mistake, books don’t always fly off the shelves. That puts the self-publisher in a tricky situation. In order to give your book the best hope of selling, it will require the proper services, which cost money. Still, there is no guarantee that you will succeed.

You have to know what your goals are, know what the risks are, and proceed according. These same risks exist with traditional publishers, which is why they are so selective about their investments.

As for “reasonable rates,” these, of course, come with a measure of subjectivity. In my opinion, a reasonable rate is a modest markup of services that allows me to make a profit and stay in business, while not taking advantage of the hopes and dreams of aspiring authors. Our pricing model reflects those standards.

I certainly don’t claim to be the cheapest, but I can promise you that there is tremendous value in what we offer. Our team, with over 50 years of combined experience in the industry, has helped 1,000+ authors produce and promote their books effectively, including several New York Times bestsellers. Our quality, customer service, and depth of knowledge are second to none — we’re confident in what we do. At the same time, we are not for everyone. I would advise any person interested in self-publishing to do their homework to determine what they are getting for the price.

And Kenny is right, the marketing and promotion component is crucial. Unless you are only interested in distributing your book to family and friends – which is often the case – you are responsible for selling your book. We offer custom outreach programs that target the top booksellers, TV/Radio shows, and book reviewers. But again, you have to determine what your budget allows and weigh that against your risk tolerance. That's the reality of the publishing business.

We’re always happy to set up a free consultation to learn more about a writer’s goals in order to devise a custom plan to help meet them.

I believe the big variable is the marketing part. Self-publishers have to do all the marketing (but also reap all the profit) and I’ve seen some of these self-publishing houses include various levels of marketing collateral production & support in their offerings. So the question is do you go bare minimum and figure out how to push your book yourself? Or do you risk paying more without knowing concretely if the extra “marketing dollars” you are paying in the upsell from the publishing house is really worth it…

Now the question I've got is — what's a "reasonable rate" for a self-publishing service provider? I think I've seen some go for as little as $0 and some well over $3,000 for their fees.