Evangelical publishers leveraged celebrity authors to break into the mainstream market

Evidence

B&H published other works of fiction, but none by authors with as much “stature and selling potential” as North; to promote the book, North visited 58 cities over the course of thirty days, traveling the country on a bus formerly used by Dolly Parton’s band, dubbed the “Dolly-Ollie bus.” Banking on a bestseller, B&H reportedly issued a first printing of 350,000 copies. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 486

Categorization

• CANDY: The ‘Dolly-Ollie bus’ — Oliver North touring on Dolly Parton’s former tour bus — is a delightfully absurd, shareable detail.
• SEED: Could anchor an essay on how evangelical publishing functioned as commercial machinery: celebrity-adjacent branding, huge print runs, bus tours — the apparatus of the ‘dominant strand’ thesis.