Acronyms, Will. It seems like a Scientologist thing- try and write them out first.
Btw, the tax laws back then were MUCH more lenient than today.
Sorry Denter.
Anything in particular you'd like me to translate?
That goes for anyone. I will do my best.
CST means the "Church of Spiritual Technology". A supposed non-profit organization that owns the copyrights to the L Ron Hubbard estate.
The royalties (their income) are channeled through two sources. Non-Fiction, which means all Dianetics and Scientology materials. And Fiction, which is handled by CST's fully owned, for-profit subsidiary
Author Services Inc or "ASI". Which is ironic because, when the non-fiction sales were down, executives from ASI would show up at Bridge Publications (BPI), where I worked to push sales on the front lines of the churches. The only reason they were there was to inspect and correct any problems they deemed "out of line" to get more sales of religious materials from the Scientology churches themselves.
I will say it again...
The for-profit corp ASI, charged only with the LRH fiction line, came to the LRH publishing house to get us to sell more non-fiction. Because, once again, they are owned and managed by CST. And if CST isn't making enough money... "All hands on deck!"
And keep in mind, at the time (1998-2000), Bridge Publications Inc handled publishing, sales and distribution of fiction and non-fiction books of Hubbard. So ASI's business with BPI should have been exclusive to the sales of fiction works. But it wasn't.
The bottom line in the church (and it's Sea Org managed affiliates), is MONEY. Money from wherever or whomever. I mattered not how many people were actually reading the books. Only that they bought them.
It should be noted that in 2002, there was another publishing company established called "
Galaxy Press". And it completely took over the publications, sales and distribution of the LRH fiction line BPI. Making BPI a non-profit organization, outside of the prior tax structure from it's earlier years. Why the sudden change? Besides the obvious monetary reasons and vested interests in church members buying and selling fiction works...
Shortly after the split, the very large evolution was put into motion by the church. It was the re-release of the L Ron Hubbard "Basic Book and Lecture Package". Now, if you ask any scientologist like Randy, they will tell you just how hard the ENTIRE church was pushing it's members to sell these packages, priced at well over a thousand dollars. Parishioners would receive calls or personal visits daily from church staff and Sea Org members, pushing them to buy these packages. Even from management level Sea Org staff who were never supposed to deal directly with public... like my sister.
Many, many of these Sea Org members were taken away from their posts to be put on a this sales project. Suddenly, it mattered less how well the church sold and delivered their actual services (auditing and auditor training), and far more about how it sold and delivered these books and audio lectures.
Multiple packages were sold to the same members. No one at any time was crossed off a list because they had already purchased the package. If they already had one, they needed to buy more as gifts for family members. If all family members had their own, the goal was to get them to donate packages to be put into libraries.
I actually have an unopened set that was given to me by my father. In fact, everyone in my family owns a set. These packages were over-sold and donated to the point where, I've actually heard of libraries selling these packages for 25 cents.
The pressure that people like my sister were put under to sell these books was tremendous. When church staff were trying to sell the package to my cousin (uncle Bob's son), he only paid for the books and didn't have money for the lectures. But that didn't stop them from charging his bank account for the lectures soon after on a Thursday afternoon... WITHOUT his authorization. Once again, Thursday at 2pm is the weekly cut-off for the church and it's staff to turn in their statistics of production to management. And if those statistics are down from the week prior, hell is unleashed upon them from management. The punishments for this range anywhere from hard physical labor to a meal of beans and rice for that next week, or until the stats are raised. And for those too jaded to keep up with this pace, the RPF or
"Rehabilitation Project Force" is not uncommon.
So in short, the tax-exempt status of Bridge Publication Inc was granted after turning over the fiction line to Galaxy Press. Then the
Church of Scientology International (CSI) released the "new and improved" Basic Book and Lecture package. After which many, many staff and Sea Org were given the personal responsibility of selling as many of these as possible to anyone that would buy them. This was no doubt the biggest push for sales of L Ron Hubbard materials in history. Just how big???
Since July 2007, over 67 million copies of basic books and lectures have been distributed.
You do the math.
