Controvertial UNC Policy Boon to Publisher

According to PW Daily For Booksellers:

The assignment of translator Michael Sells’s Approaching the Qur’an
(White Cloud Press) as required reading for incoming freshman at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has resulted in a federal
court case, national media coverage and legislative calls to curtail
the university’s funding. It’s also given the book an Amazon ranking
of 40 last week, created demand at the state’s booksellers and made it
a challenge for White Cloud, Ashland, Ore., and its distributor, SCB,
to keep on top of orders.

White Cloud, a nine-year-old publishers of titles in “traditions of
the great faiths,” was “pleasantly” caught by surprise when it learned
of the 1999 trade paperback’s selection by UNC in June, according to
publisher Steven Scholl. “Fortunately at the time we were getting
ready for another reprinting of the steady seller, but over the summer
have gone back for four more,” bringing the total to 41,000 copies in
print.

A range of booksellers, including Sally Brewster, buyer at Charlotte’s
Park Road Books (formerly Little Professor Book Center), Tom Campbell,
co-owner of The Regulator Bookshop in Durham, buyer Robert Segedy at
McIntyre’s Fine Books and Bookends in Fearrington Village near Chapel
Hill and Bristol Books manager Nicki Leone in Wilmington, indicated a
much greater customer interest than initially anticipated.

Quail Ridge Books, the Raleigh store owned by Nancy Olson, has taken
the extra step of putting together in-store events to take advantage
of the publicity and address the issues. Tomorrow, August 28, Quail
Ridge will host a panel comprised of local university professors, a
liberal Methodist minister and president of the conservative John
Locke Foundation.

And on September 7, Sells will appear at Quail Ridge, as part of a
fundraiser for the Common Sense Foundation, a progressive public
policy think tank in Raleigh. Olson commented of Sells’s decision to
visit her store when he was in Raleigh, “Isn’t it interesting he would
want to come to an independent, instead of one of the many chain
stores in town?”

Carl Ernst, the North Carolina professor (and author of Shambhala’s
Guide to Sufism) who initiated the selection, called the book “the
best of Muslim scriptures available in English.” But the Christian
fundamentalist Family Policy Network charged “forced Islamic
indoctrination” and asked for a temporary restraining order requiring
the school to stop distributing the book.

The order was rejected by the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in
Richmond, Va., last week. State assistant attorney general Celia Lata
defended the charges against the school, stating, “A university that
exposes students only to what they already know or believe would not
equip them to live in the world.”–Bob Summer

More on the controversy here.