The revelations made in the publishing-industry newsletter Buchreport concern Weltbild, a company with an annual €1.7bn (£1.5bn) turnover and 6,400 employees. It is Germany's largest bookseller after Amazon and wholly owned by the Catholic Church.
Buchreport revealed that Weltbild's massive assortment of titles available to customers online includes some 2,500 "erotic" books with unmistakably lewd titles including Call Me Slut!, Take Me Here, Take Me Now! and Lawyer's Whore, to name a few. The publisher's website also pictures the titles' lascivious dust jackets that feature colour photographs of scantily clad women in high heels and erotic underwear.
All of this is available in print. I am not making this up. Read here or here about the scandal. In the wake of the sex abuse scandals, it hardly seems shocking but it shocks nonetheless. It makes me wonder about the common sense of those who run things. Did you really think that this would not be found out? Did you really think that this was not going to be a big deal?
The Catholic Church bought Weltbild more than 30 years ago. The publisher has gradually transformed itself into one of Germany's largest media companies with the help of some €182mof Catholic Church tax levied on believers. To increase its profits, in 1998 the company merged with five other publishing houses that market pornographic titles. One of them is Droemer Knaur, which is 50 per cent church-owned. Another is Blue Panther Books, which was excluded from the list of participating publishers at this year's Frankfurt Book Fair allegedly because of the pornographic content of is titles.
You know what they say, be careful who you sleep with because you are also sleeping with the last people that person slept with... apparently somebody forgot that ancient piece of wisdom. Maybe now the publisher will clean up its act.... or at least wear a condom?
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