Author Topic: Who Owns TAN? (Read 2517 times)

aquinasnmore · « **on:** October 12, 2011, 11:55:40 AM »

You may have noticed changes in TAN books over the past couple of years.

About two years ago TAN declared bankruptcy and was bought by another the company. The other company in the press releases was St. Benedict Press. St. Benedict Press is actually a division of Trinity Road, LLC. which is a reincarnation of Providence House. Trinity Road also owns several other web properties including a Catholic ecommerce site, an Irish gifts site, a generic Christian sympathy gift site and a rosary ecommerce site.

Trinity Road received a bunch of funding several years ago from Good Will Publishers, a publisher of Protestant bibles, books and a bereavement book for companies to give to employees that can be any religious (or not) flavor that is desired.

The current board of Good Will Publishers seems to have a bunch of Catholics on it. It isn't clear if Good Will is being taken over by Catholics or if the Catholics on the board see Good Will Publishers as a cash cow to fund other things and they don't mind what it publishes.

Any way, I thought you would be interested.

s2srea · « **Reply #1 on:** October 12, 2011, 11:59:00 AM »

Yes this is interesting AnM. I'm sure you have an insight that most of us would never really take the time to investigate. Thanks for sharing it!

aquinasnmore · « **Reply #2 on:** October 12, 2011, 12:03:55 PM »

Being on the inside of the industry you find out a bunch of interesting things that the general public never hears about.

Another publisher, Servant Books, which publishes solid Catholic titles, was purchased by St. Anthony Messenger Press several years ago.

SAMP publishes titles by known heretics. They briefly tried to combine the catalogs but complaints from customers made them split them up again.

I think that SAMP bought Servant to prop up a dying industry in heterodox publishing by providing an orthodox imprint.

s2srea · « **Reply #3 on:** October 12, 2011, 12:07:29 PM »

Quote from: aquinasnmore

Being on the inside of the industry you find out a bunch of interesting things that the general public never hears about.

Sure, I could imagine!

Quote

Another publisher, Servant Books, which publishes solid Catholic titles, was purchased by St. Anthony Messenger Press several years ago.

SAMP publishes titles by known heretics.

OUCH!

I spoke with Hobbledehoy not to long ago. I know his emphasis is on reading books with imprimaturs from prior to VII (obviously). I'm not sure if he has a specific date, but if you notice, he seems to have one of the greatest libraries of old catholic (mostly out of print it seems) books. I think we're fortunate he shares much of it with us!

aquinasnmore · « **Reply #4 on:** October 12, 2011, 12:09:27 PM »

Neuman Press, Angelus, Preserving Christian Publications, Loretto, Sophia Institute and TAN have plenty of titles that fit that bill.

Raoul76 · « **Reply #5 on:** October 12, 2011, 12:18:11 PM »

I have heard several people say that TAN books are doctored.

Yeah, sticking to older books is the way to go. Of course, the TAN books mostly have imprimaturs, since they are reprints of these older books, but what if they really are cut up? I remember reading in one of them, I think -- but am not sure -- it was the 40 Dreams of St. John Bosco, something is mentioned about evil republics. There was a parenthetical interjection that tried to specify that he was talking about Europe ( as if to let America off the hook ). Clearly this was not in the original book; who does TAN think they are to put their own commentary right in the middle of the text itself, making it look to the casual observer as if it might be part of the text, not even in a foreword or footnote?

TKGS · « **Reply #6 on:** October 12, 2011, 12:19:27 PM »

The new TAN Books has also stopped publishing a number of books that concern the Crisis in the Church.

aquinasnmore · « **Reply #7 on:** October 12, 2011, 12:26:29 PM »

You will also find that Catholic Book Publishing "memory-holed" the images in their Baltimore Catechism books. They used to have pictures of the Tridentine liturgy but all of those parts were removed from the images without any change in copyright being made.

Found that out a couple of weeks ago from some very good SSPX friends.

Anna1959 · « **Reply #8 on:** October 12, 2011, 01:13:18 PM »

I am SO holding onto all my old Catholic (not Old Catholic, lol) books! One way to get them if you don't have them is to look on Amazon in the Amazon Marketplace (check copyright dates), and Alibris.

Over the years I have lost/misplaced the Crisis in the Church books and booklets that I bought from TAN in the 70s. I wish I still had them.

Like Hobbledehoy, I only read book with pre-V2 imprimaturs/copyrights. My cutoff date is 1959 and back (though with more education I might be persuaded to push that date back a few years. :)

Anna1959 · « **Reply #9 on:** October 12, 2011, 01:14:51 PM »

Note: There is a woman on Ebay who sells many very old protestant and related books, all on CDROM for something like a dollar.

We need to get traditional Catholics who know how to do this, and put all the very old Catholic books on CDROM and offer them for cost or whatever.

You can fit a LOT of older books (or any books) on a CDROM!

MaterDominici · « **Reply #10 on:** October 12, 2011, 01:37:20 PM »

Quote from: TKGS

The new TAN Books has also stopped publishing a number of books that concern the Crisis in the Church.

A few books were dropped as a new publishing agreement was necessary with the author. This is, of course, more likely to affect Crisis books.

Vladimir · « **Reply #11 on:** October 12, 2011, 01:50:26 PM »

How does a book get an imprimatur anyhow? Do SSPX bishops have the ability to give them?

Any tips on getting books published? i.e., if one has an electronic copy of a translation of some Catholic book in the public domain, what are some easy ways to get it into a printed book format?

TKGS · « **Reply #12 on:** October 12, 2011, 03:55:08 PM »

Quote from: MaterDominici

Quote from: TKGS
The new TAN Books has also stopped publishing a number of books that concern the Crisis in the Church.

A few books were dropped as a new publishing agreement was necessary with the author. This is, of course, more likely to affect Crisis books.

And which authors who criticize the New Church were unwilling to sign agreements with the new owners? Have they decided that they were simply unwilling to ring the alarm bells through the new publisher?

And then there are the books whose copyrights were owned by TAN (The Great Sacrilege by Fr. Wathen (RIP) comes to mind) that simply vanished from the website.

I think you're making an excuse for the publisher that will publish Catholic books as long as the reader has to connect the dots concerning the Crisis. Of course, I haven't checked the website in a long time, have they obtained those publishing agreements yet? Have they returned to publishing books that unambiguously condem Conciliarism? I'm just asking, their website is much too slow for me to do the research.

MaterDominici · « **Reply #13 on:** October 12, 2011, 04:24:36 PM »

Quote from: TKGS

And which authors who criticize the New Church were unwilling to sign agreements with the new owners? Have they decided that they were simply unwilling to ring the alarm bells through the new publisher?

And then there are the books whose copyrights were owned by TAN (The Great Sacrilege by Fr. Wathen (RIP) comes to mind) that simply vanished from the website.

I think you're making an excuse for the publisher that will publish Catholic books as long as the reader has to connect the dots concerning the Crisis. Of course, I haven't checked the website in a long time, have they obtained those publishing agreements yet? Have they returned to publishing books that unambiguously condem Conciliarism? I'm just asking, their website is much too slow for me to do the research.

I don't know much about the specific books, but I'll give you an example. Old TAN printed a book called "Hell & How to Avoid Hell". The first part by Fr. Schouppe and the second by Mr. Nelson. The New TAN prints "The Dogma of Hell" which seems to be the first part of the earlier book without the latter part which Mr. Nelson wrote.

As far as the question of whether or not they drop all books critizing the New Mass, you can look here:
https://www.tanbooks.com/index.php/Modern-Errors
I've not read many of them. But it seems if they were attempting to drop everything critical of the NO, they missed a few.

I'm not against criticizing them when they desserve it, but I haven't been convinced that they dropped any books solely due to content.

MaterDominici · « **Reply #14 on:** October 12, 2011, 04:33:33 PM »

Quote from: Raoul76

I have heard several people say that TAN books are doctored.

Yeah, sticking to older books is the way to go. Of course, the TAN books mostly have imprimaturs, since they are reprints of these older books, but what if they really are cut up? I remember reading in one of them, I think -- but am not sure -- it was the 40 Dreams of St. John Bosco, something is mentioned about evil republics. There was a parenthetical interjection that tried to specify that he was talking about Europe ( as if to let America off the hook ). Clearly this was not in the original book; who does TAN think they are to put their own commentary right in the middle of the text itself, making it look to the casual observer as if it might be part of the text, not even in a foreword or footnote?

Related to what I said above, this seems pretty wishy-washy, Raoul. If 40 Dreams is indeed the book you are recalling, the commentary before and after the dreams was written by St. Bosco's biographers. And, if you know for certain that the commentary (in any book) was inserted by the publisher, why wouldn't anyone else reading the book know the same?