Big news from the Far East/Middle East division of the BBT
Hare Krsna,
Please accept my humble obeisances, all glories to Srila Prabhupada!
In a historical first for all BBT divisions worldwide, we are extremely excited to be offering for sale, beginning this month, the first nine (of an eventual thirty-six) very specially designed foreign language titles produced by the Far East/Middle East division of the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust (www.bbtfeme.com). Several years in the making, the cover designs for all these titles were carefully researched to strongly appeal to—and sell tons of books to!—the millions of people from Far Eastern and Middle Eastern backgrounds who are living in the large ethnic communities of our cities, or visiting by the millions as foreign tourists, or earnestly studying within the thousands of colleges and universities throughout the world.
To illustrate how deeply this cover research went, the BBT FEME’s Beyond Birth and Death series (in Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese, Farsi, and Arabic) dramatically uses different eyes on the covers specifically from each separate culture. For example, the Vietnamese edition shows a real Vietnamese newborn baby’s eye next to a dying Vietnamese old man’s eye, the Arabic edition uses a real Arabian baby’s eye and an old man’s eye, and so on.
This laser focus on each unique culture helps make the covers not only fully relatable but even riveting once those eyes appear to be those of the reader’s own Korean or Iranian baby, or their own dying Vietnamese, Arabian, or Chinese grandfather, etc.
All the titles try to apply this careful attention to cultural detail. This feature is dramatically illustrated in the Science of Self-Realization series, as well as in all the Arabic titles, which are designed to be especially sensitive to those from Arabic and Muslim backgrounds. And these designs are already being recognized by those who are trained to judge the effectiveness (and wide sales appeal) of well-designed covers in dramatically conveying the message within any book. Recently the BBT FEME book catalog itself, which displays all of these unique covers, received top awards in a USA design competition, beating out 3,000 other contestants. This is just an indication of how much the books are already attracting serious attention. And grabbing attention and even fascination in any potential buyer is most often the critical motivator behind the final sale. All this effort to reach deeply into the reader’s own specific cultural perspective and background is meant for one purpose only—to effectively sell unlimited quantities of Srila Prabhupada’s books! Each and every one of the millions of these “foreigners in a foreign land” all yearn to be truly happy, and they all strongly prefer (or depend on) learning how to do so by receiving clear guidance through their native language, their original mother tongue. Actually nothing can ever really replace the language of one’s birth, and therefore nothing but one’s native language can really bring Srila Prabhupada’s divine message into the deepest parts of one’s heart.
Please visit www. bbtfeme.com to read wonderful testimonials about these books, along with accounts of how easy they are to distribute. These special titles are being sold right now to BBT divisions around the world, one of which is making sure they’re available to the foreigners lining up right now to attend the World Cup matches in Brazil! Therefore we highly recommend that you immediately place your orders before this first printing runs out. Your own foreign-language speaking communities, visitors, and students have been asking and sometimes even begging the devotees for books in their own languages for years, if not decades! They’re finally here! Please order now!!!
If you would like to purchase some of these books then just contact your local temple, make a request, and they can contact the BBT for that area for ordering the books.
Your servant,
Satya Narayana dasa
