Just over two years ago FARMS began publishing books on its own rather than in partnership with other publishers. In part that decision was made in order to give FARMS more editorial control over its publications. We also wanted to try to reach a broader audience by marketing our books ourselves, in the hopes that focusing solely on distributing our own books might be a more effective way to reach more people than getting lost in the larger marketing efforts of a larger company (the jury is still out on that trial).

Naturally, these publishing and marketing efforts may make FARMS look more commercial, especially as we compete with other, more sophisticated book sellers for the attention of book buyers. But at heart FARMS has not changed at all. Our goals and intentions remain the same. We are still a nonprofit educational foundation whose main goals are to foster faithful research on ancient scripture and to share the results of that research with the world as widely and economically as possible. Attractive book covers and color catalogs don’t change that. We are not a general commercial publisher; we do not accept manuscripts outside our focus on the scriptures. Any revenues from the sale of our publications are used to support further research and additional publications—but in truth, few FARMS publications cover all of their costs (developmental, editorial, production, etc.) and the educational work of FARMS depends heavily on support from the donations and membership fees of faithful friends like you.