Yesterday I started a series to bring you companies that produce products in the United States, with U.S. materials and workers, which started me considering where all of our books are printed. I didn’t say published, I said printed. Undoubtedly, most of the books and Bibles on your shelves are from publishers in the U.S., so at first glance it appears that you have purchased a book produced in the USA. To find out where it was actually printed though, you need to go to the copyright page (near the front where the ISBN is located), look through the small print near the bottom and it will say “printed in …”.

I did a very small sample of our books – children’s books, Bibles, textbooks – and found that about 50% were actually printed in the USA. You will not be helped by relying on one publisher though, as books from the same company were printed here in the U.S. and in other countries as well. Example: we have several Bibles that were published by Zondervan’s Publishing House (Grand Rapids, Michigan), and they were produced in the U.S., Korea, and China (I was most bothered that our favorite children’s Bible was printed in China).

Granted, there are some books in which there are no options other than not having it in your library, but when it comes to Bibles, we do have a choice, and I plan on letting the publishers know that if they have any Bibles produced outside of the United States, that I will not purchase it. Publishing companies located in the United States should be manufacturing their products here with U.S. workers.

I will certainly be checking inside books before I purchase them from now on.

OneMom