This is a great initiative, but my nagging concern is: resale price maintenance.

In the commercial world, manufacturers and distributors go out of their way to prevent resellers from discounting their products too steeply. When retail consumers see the products offered cheaply in a discount store like Costco or Wal Mart, they are not going to want to pay full price in Bloomingdales or Nordstrom.

Depending on how widespread and successful the “free books” program is, I fear it may eventually reduce the amount people are willing to donate when they encounter a book distributor. If they just saw a big “free take one” display somewhere, they are unlikely to give a good donation. That is my fear.

It might be better for the “sastra dana” to take the form of donating books to the temples, so they can always keep their BBT bills paid and always have a good surplus of books for the distributors.

If book distributors are not worried about how much they have to get for each book, they will be in less anxiety and will become more and more enthusiastic. Some people will only give $2 or $3, but someone else usually comes along and gives $20 or $30.

With sastra dana, the book distributors could always confidently say, “we only ask you to give a donation–please keep the book and give whatever your heart dictates.” If they sometimes give only $1 or less (it rarely happens once you get the hang of it), you can still let them keep the book without anxiety.

It is awkward to try to tell them, “In that case please take this smaller book”, and it can leave a bad impression so we should not do it. This awkwardness probably makes some devotees reluctant to try book distribution: worrying about collecting enough interferes with the positive exchange with the public.

With “sastra dana” keeping a good stock of books on hand for distribution and no anxiety about how much to get for each book, more book distributors will go out and will enjoy it more when they do. More people will start going out and get hooked.

If people keep donating books to the temple, the managers and devotees in the temple will also feel the need to distribute those books. There will be no anxiety about money to run the temple, either. Up to 50% of the money collected by distributors could be used for necessary temple expenditures (wasn’t that the formula Srila Prabhupada gave us?) A temple that is short on money but has a big stock of donated books will find a way to field a party of distributors to convert up to 50% of the proceeds into available temple funds.

Sometimes on book distribution someone tells me, “I really want the book, but I have no money today. I promise I will give a donation next time.” Maybe I am just a krpana, but I am usually reluctant to part with a book at such times, unless the person demonstrates some extra sincerity (for example, by discussing why they want the book).

I gave one paperback Gita free to a high school girl on Sunday, because she told me that the last time she only had enough to get Krishna book and she really wanted the Gita too. She told me she had been reading Krishna book and liked it (that certainly made me feel warm and fuzzy), and she remembered that I was the one she had gotten it from. But in the back of my mind I still felt that, if she wanted it bad enough, she could at least donate a couple dollars. She probably just went to a $10 movie or spent $4 on a Jamba Juice or a latte at Starbucks.

Here in San Jose we do pass out a lot of free books. We even have “door hangers” where we can go through an apartment complex and leave a book on everyone’s doorknob. I just get nervous that, if the “free books” program expands too widely and the public starts to value the books too cheaply, no one will want to donate much for them.

Similar to the free book racks, an idea that has been proving its worth are “Smart Boxes”. These were pioneered by Kamalavati dasi in New Vrndavana and are being successfully implemented and promoted by Vaisesika.

Here in San Jose, Venkatesa Prabhu has become our “smart box” acarya, engaging many others in putting these boxes in various stores and regularly collecting from them. They are regularly pulling in good collections.

The Smart Boxes are similar to the “donation” style book racks, except instead of saying “donation” they actually have a specific price label on each book. It is a kind of honor system, where people are expected to put the actual price of the book in the box. Mostly, it seems, people are still honest enough to give the correct price, and to not run away with the collection box.

I am not the expert, but maybe I will interview Vaisesika for a short Dandavats article on Smart Boxes. He has been giving seminars in various temples about them: how to build them, where to place them, how to get merchants to accept and keep them on their premises, where they have been most successful, etc. I saw him do a nice presentation in L.A. on the subject.

Having smart boxes with fixed prices, or even racks requesting donations, is for me a lot better than just having racks that just say, “Take One”, for the reasons stated in my earlier comment.

Akruranath Prabhuji, please consider the following.

Sastra Dana places only small amounts of books in stores and businesses and that only after obtaining the permission from the owner/manager. When people sit in a dental office waiting room they don’t know that we have donated those books. They think the dental office have provided the books to entertain and benefit their customers. Thus the value of the books increases in the eyes of the dental office customers.

We’ve been now distributing in LA and San Diego for over 8 years. In these 8 years we have not gone to a same store twice!!!

As far as I can see your main concern are the book racks. Please note that the book racks distribute only small books, pamphlet-like. Our plan is, as the program expands, to print a few “free” titles to be used for the rack distribution. Free titles will be printed only for the Sastra Dana program. Those titles will not be sold anywhere. They will be used only for free distribution. We project to come to this point in about three years. I have already spoken with the devotees from the BBT and they are ready for us.

Also please note that not all of our racks give free books. Some racks ask for a donation while some racks ask for a specific amount.

These stand-alone racks are, in our experience, superior to small smart boxes because it is much easier to get a store owner to give you a floor space then a counter space.

I think this answers your doubts. If you have any more doubts, before commenting, please visit the following page: http://www.sastradana.com/html....._books.htm That should help.

The Sastra Dana program is a great way to engage our congregation in the missionary activities. Check out “MANDY” video: http://www.sastradana.com/html/video1.htm

Hope you are well.

Your humble servant,
Mahat-tattva Dasa
www.sastradana.com

Mahat-tattva Prabhu:

I did look at your website and the Mandy interview, and it is all very well done. The careful attention going into this program and even into making a nice website about it is evident. This is first-class devotional service.

Please do not take my previous remarks as discouraging. I was just expresing my own neurosis or anxiety about maintaining the public’s price perceptions about the books.

I have never had it actually happen where someone I stopped on book distribution says, “Why should I give a donation for this book? I can get them for free over in the coffe shop.” (I am just paranoid that someday as Sastra Dana expands that may start to happen.)

It is a good point you make about leaving them in dentists’ offices and hair salons and so on, I guess hotel rooms would fit in that category too. They would not have the effect I am concerned about. I am more afraid of the “Take One” displays, and what might happen if they become too prominent.

The idea of having special “free” titles is a good one, too. “Reservior of Pleasure” is one good free title we already have, and I am sure you will come up with some other good ones.

You are right that the “donation” racks and *especially* the racks that ask for specific amounts do not frighten me. We could have racks everywhere asking for $5 for a “Sri Isopanishad” or a “Chant and Be Happy”. If someone I met had recently noticed the rack, they might still be happy to get the book from me for $3 or $4 in a face-to-face interaction.

I hope those racks — *especially* the ones that ask for a decent price — become more prominent and famous than the little “muscular dystrophy” collection jars we see at grocery store cashier counters.

At any rate, the Sastra Dana program is glorious and I am embarrassed that I may have come across as a wet blanket. It was not my intention.

Your servant, Akruranatha dasa

Dandavats.

Your humble servant,
Mahat-tattva Dasa

Hare Krsna,
PAMHO. AGSTP.
Regarding comment #3:
Sastra Dana is a very good idea. I went to indian shopping area in Queens, New York yesterday and saw a stall run by Jehovah’s witness. They had small free books in many languages including Hindi. The books were titled like “Unity of human beings”. Unless you open the book, you would not know the book had preaching of Jehovas.
Our congregations can be encouraged to donate for Sastra Dana. Again temples might feel threatened that this is eating into their donations.
IMHO, to avoid this problem, temples can donate certain percentage of collections to programs like Sastra Dana, cow protection etc. Alternatively, they can set earmarks for donations. New Vrindavan temple is doing earmarks.
your servant
Hari Bol

Jehova’s Witnesses do a good job of getting their people out on the street and door to door for preaching their message. We can appreciate them for that.

“Jehovah’s Witnesses count as ‘adherents’ the number attending its meetings, which as of 2006 is some 16.5 million. Of these adherents it counts as ‘members’ those who report time preaching each month. As of August 2006 this membership is about 6.5 million.” — Wikipedia

That is interesting. To be a “member” JW you have to go out on book distribution.

JWs are limited in the ways they are allowed to approach people, which stems from their history in the 1920s and 1930s in the U.S. of very aggressively confronting people on the streets and offending them.

(I am not clear on the exact history, but I read some old cases in law school about it. They used to walk around with phonographs loudly playing recordings of their leader, inveighing against other religions and specifically criticizing the Catholic Pope. This caused a lot of ruffled feathers and eventually they were ordered to keep quiet unless someone approached them to discuss. )

The JWs will give you their literature for free, but I always got the feeling it was not very valuable.

Of course I am biased, but I believe if we preach properly we can convince the public that Srila Prabhupada’s books are highly valuable works of important classic world literature, of great intellectual and cultural interest, not to be compared with the tracts of some modern sect of recent origin.

Historical note:

The JWs, like the 7th Day Adventists, were highly influenced by the millenial “Millerite” movement of the 19th Century in the U.S. Rev. Miller preached that it could be determined with precision when Jesus’ predicted thousand-year rule on earth would begin. Hundreds of thousands, if not a million Americans [and there were not very many Americans in those days], believed that the world as we know it would end in October of 1844. Huge numbers of sincere believers gave away their farms and all their property and waited on hilltops for Jesus to come. When it didn’t happen — the so-called “Great Disappointment” — various groups remained faithful to the idea of predicting the millenium, but had various recalculations of the precise day. There were subsequent “disappointments”.

Rev. Russel, who started what became the JWs, was from within that tradition, and he accepted the views of a Mr. Barbour that the millenium would begin in 1878 (later revised to 1879). When it still did not happen as predicted, Russel said that the millenium really had begun, but it was just “not perceptible”. The JWs have since revised the date and say it started in 1914.

More recently, they predicted that Jesus would actually come in 1975, and when it did not happen they lost a lot of membership and their leaders apologized for building up false hopes.

During WWII, some JWs were victims of violence in the U.S. because they did not support the war effort. Ironically, in Nazi Germany, JWs were imprisoned in concentration camps unless they would recant their faith. They were probably the only group in the Nazi camps that could be released just by changing their professed beliefs. Few did, however, and many perished in the camps.

In the late 1940s and 50s they came back into the spotlight of U.S. constitutional jurisprudence when the question was raised whether their children could be expelled from public schools for refusing to participate in the pledge of allegiance to the U.S. flag. At first, with the memory of WWII and hightened patriotism still fresh, Felix Frankfurter wrote a majority opinion stating that the kids could be expelled, because our national patriotic symbols were that important to us. Several years later, the Supreme Court unanimously reversed itself and decided that religious freedom prevented public schools from insisting that kids participate in the flag pledge.

When I was in elementary school in the Washington D.C. suburbs in the 60s [many of my classmates were embassy workers’ kids], I remember a little Iranian girl was exempted from the U.S. flag pledge, and the teacher went out of her way to make sure the kids didn’t razz her about it.

* * * * *

I think devotees can learn a lot by looking into the history and organization and even the theological conflicts of other religious groups, which can favorably be applied to their discussion of strategies and organization of ISKCON.

I do not mean to say that we get our ideas or inspiration from other groups. We stick to the parampara. I only mean having a general knowledge of religious history will enrich our discussions and conceptualization in many ways. It gives us a better vocabulary for some of our own concerns and will give some tangible examples of successes and failures, strengths and weaknesses, of different strategies and organizational methods.

I’ve given many Sastra Dana presentations that demonstrated that running the Sastra Dana program does not eat up local temple donations. It simply gives your congregation anther reason to donate. Thus they donate more.

Hari Bol
PAMHO. AGTSP.
Dear Mahattatva Prabhu,
Is this presentation available online? Can you post the url? As per my information, not all iskcon temples have started a Sastradan program. People can forward your presentation link to their temple authorities.
Hare Krsna
your servant

I never recorded any of those presentations. I will try to record it next time.

Your servant,
Mahat-tattva Dasa
www.sastradana.com

Hari Bol,
PAMHO. AGTSP.
I recently went to an Indian restaurant in Yale University area. They had some free booklets from Connecticut Natural pages which had some articles about environment, naturopathy etc. and then they had small ads by allied businesses.
This restaurant is frequented by non-indians and Yale students. Immediately i thought about Sastradana books and thought maybe this restaurant will keep iskcon free books.
When these free books will be available for distribution? what is the procedure of devotess getting them?
Hare Krsna
your servant

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