Profitable times for new pope’s publisher

The offices of Ignatius Press are in a cluttered two-story house next door to a convent of cloistered Carmelite nuns.

The copier and postage machine are set up on tables in the kitchen. The company president sits in the basement. The 13 staffers, all but one Catholic, take prayer breaks.

Welcome to the new pope’s publishing house.

This shoestring operation is the nation’s largest publisher and distributor of Catholic books, magazines and videos, but it’s usually a rather serene place to work. That all changed in an instant last week, as Ignatius Press also happens to own the U.S. copyright to 22 books by the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now known to the world as Pope Benedict XVI.

“You have the right friends and look what happens,” joked the Rev. Joseph Fessio, a Jesuit priest who met Ratzinger in 1972 when he was in Germany, working on his doctorate in theology.

For decades, Ratzinger has been sending his manuscripts simultaneously to his German publisher and to Ignatius Press. He writes in German on a computer, then sends both a disk and a paper copy to San Francisco, where they land on the desk of production editor Carolyn Lemon, Fessio’s first employee.

She forwards the manuscripts to translators and copy editors and sends Ratzinger any questions about content and translation while the book designers get to work. When all is approved, it goes to a printer in Ann Arbor, Mich., then to a warehouse in Fort Collins, Colo., for shipping. The whole process usually takes up to a year.

Ratzinger’s books, most of which are dense, scholarly works, usually sell about 25,000 copies annually, each printed on expensive, acid-free paper with a hand-sewn binding. But that’s how many books sold on April 19 alone, in the first four hours after the papal announcement.

“We’re having to reprint quickly,” Ignatius Press President Mark Brumley said. “All the chains are coming out of the woodwork wanting the new pope’s books.”

When fresh copies arrive, Ignatius will indicate on book covers that Ratzinger is now Pope Benedict XVI, Brumley said.

His latest book, “Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith,” includes published and unpublished letters, homilies and other writings collected by his former students. A first run of 15,000 copies will be available in stores in a few weeks, said Ignatius marketing director Tony Ryan, who expects a second run “pretty darn quick.”

Meanwhile, reprints of his previous works are being rushed and are expected in soon.

Ignatius Press was born several years after Fessio’s fateful meeting with Ratzinger in Europe, when Fessio decided to try to make the writings of European theologians available in the United States.

“We wanted to translate books and send them to U.S. publishers,” but the large publishers weren’t interested, Lemon said. Fessio and production editor Lemon, then a librarian, knew nothing about the business at the time, but they knew about books.

In the 25 years since, the nonprofit company has grown to $12 million to $14 million in sales each year, Fessio said.