Praise the lord, pass the royalty checks

The NY Times reports today on Lakewood Church pastor Joel Osteen's new multimillion-dollar book deal, which puts him in the same class — at least in terms of literary profits — as presidents, popes and Alan Greenspan. Osteen has signed a deal with Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster. It's something of a coup for Simon & Schuster, who lured Osteen away from Warner Faith, publisher of the Your Best Life Now juggernaut.

What's on the line here, of course, is the almighty dollar. Though it's not clear exactly how much Osteen's new book deal is worth — company policy prevents publishers' employees from talking about the specifics — sources told the Times that Osteen was seeking "a guarantee of close to $13 million." That would make it one of the biggest nonfiction deals ever, even ahead of the $10 million Bill Clinton got for My Life. Osteen's deal isn't set up like most, though: Instead of getting an advance based on future royalties and a royalty rate of 15 percent of the cover price of each book, Osteen will get a smaller advance and up to 50 percent of the publisher's profit for sales of the book.

Considering that this book will probably sell at least as well as Your Best Life Now, which has 3.8 million copies in print, we doubt Pastor Joel will have to worry about money for a while.