Terry suggested, "I would think C of C was the grand-daddy of all the Ex-JW books."
I can't agree with you on that. Both CoC and "A People for His Name" ( which I had the pleasure of resurrecting, with the help of a large quantity of tana-leaf tea) were originally published by "vanity" publishing houses, which means that no one in the commercial book business felt that either title had much likelihood of being profitable.
So what does a "vanity" publisher do?
He says, "Yeah, Sonny, we can print yer book. We'll give you "X"-thousand copies and deliver them to you for only "20X"-thousand dollars, paid up front, in full."
(I'm speculating here; I do not have the details of either Ray Franz' or Tony Wills' (aka "Tim White") ACTUAL contracts, but I will bet you dollars to donuts that the contracts were in essence just as I have represented them, and I would win that bet.)
So what happens next is that a few weeks later a truck shows up at the author's house, and the author takes delivery of all "X"-thousand copies of his new book. It is left to the author to become a coleporteur of his book.
Tim White's book was published in 1967 (24 BIE - Before the Internet Era) and the distribution mechanism were archaic. Priority Mail wasn't even available then! Tim placed fewer than 200 copies of his book, became overcome with depression, took the remaining inventory to a local dump and set them on fire.
Ray Franz published "CoC" in 1983 (8 BIE) and Ray was the beneficiary of more advantageous circumstances than Tim White had. Ray had contacts in the XJW community who helped spread the word about his book. In contrast, Tim was a loner.
...but I digress...
Of all the XJW books published since, say, 1950, only "Visions of Glory: A History and a Memory of Jehovah's Witnesses" by Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1978) was a commercial success. And it remains an excellent book to this day, in spite of being written by a woman (and thus subject to subliminal dismissal by most JWs).
At the very least, "Visions of Glory" deserves to be honored as the grand-mother of XJW books!
