Successful non-profit institutions depend upon a profit-making sector in their budgets: consider the Girl Scouts of the USA’s mouth-watering cookies, or The Salvation Army’s bell-ringing Santas, or Goodwill Industries International, Inc.’s local thrift stores. For St. Vladimir’s Seminary, that sector is St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, often known simply as “SVS Press.” Revenues from SVS Press, the seminary’s publishing arm, and SVS Bookstore, the seminary’s distribution arm, together provided net profits that comprised 12% of the seminary’s operating budget in fiscal year 2011.
Without contributions from SVS Press and SVS Bookstore, the Seminary would simply not be able to maintain a day-to-day positive cash flow. Therefore, during the past year, in order to maintain a competitive edge in the publishing industry and book market, SVS Press has moved into the Digital Age by publishing E-Books (electronic books). During this past year, generous donors funded these important digital initiatives:
- An anonymous donor gave $12,000, which allowed SVS Press to place 23 titles on Amazon Kindle; now, readers may shop for and browse, and download and read, books like those in the press’s Popular Patristics Series, or Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann’s For the Life of the World.
- A $7,500 donation by Mark and Hresula Hudoff funded a Short Run Digital Printing project that brought 14 SVS Press titles back into print, with 11 additional titles slated for reprinting in FY12.
- Another anonymous donor gave $5,000 to re-format the press’s best-selling title Father Arseny 1893–1973: Priest, Prisoner, and Spiritual Father into a compact disk audio book.
St. Vladimir’s Seminary thanks these donors for helping its press remain viable and profitable within the rapidly changing publishing industry!
See a complete list of SVS Press digital titles and reprints on page 23 of our newly published FY11 Annual Report here.
View all of our SVS Press titles and Bookstore stock here; order titles online, or call 914-961-2203 or 1-800-204-BOOK (2665).
