Krishna Books Inc. Now Actually Printing Books!
The tentative publishing schedule this year alone (2001) provides for at least one paperback per quarter and the printing of a hard and soft cover 1000 page, 48 color print, 6×9, 1972 McMillan edition of the Bhagavad-gita As It Is.
Volume One of Krishna Book may also be printed this calendar year, or early next year. Easy Journey to Other Planets was printed in the first quarter, and Krishna, The Reservoir
Hare Krishna Locanananda Prabhu and Madhudvisa Prabhu:
cc: Nara Narayana Vishwakarma Prabhu, Nischintya Prabhu, Puranjana Prabhu, Veda Guhya Prabhu, Yasodanandan Prabhu
Please accept my obeisances. All Glories to Srila Prabhupada.
After reading the published correspondence between yourselves along with Locanananda Prabhu’s VNN article, Part III, I would like to offer a few observations regarding issues surrounding Srila Prabhupada’s transcendental literatures. Having just spent a good part of the 1990’s researching and litigating over many of these issues, it appears to me that many of the points discussed involve information which has resulted in inaccurate conclusions being drawn. Kindly take my comments in that light.
As regards the 1997-1998 BBT International Inc (“BBTI”) v Kary litigation:
A primary result of the BBTI v Kary litigation in California was revalidation of the original Bhaktivedanta Book Trust formed by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada on May 29, 1972. It is, therefore, inaccurate to say that Srila Prabhupada’s BBT does not exist when, in fact, revalidation of Srila Prabhupada’s BBT was the precise legal result of eighteen months of fierce litigation.
Neither is it accurate to say that Hans Kary (Hansadutta dasa) signed over the copyrights to the BBTI, or to any entity for that matter. Rather, in return for stipulating to avoid a trial on his dubious claim as a “lifelong” BBT trustee (“dubious” because of the strong counter argument that he failed to act and was not fit to act as a trustee), the original BBT was legally revalidated and Hansadutta dasa was offered a seat on the nonprofit licensee publishing board, Krishna Books Inc, a California nonprofit religious corporation.
The reason that this resolution of that litigation was undoubtedly better than going to trial on the merits was that even had Hansadutta dasa been recognized as a BBT trustee, it is overwhelming likely that he would have been swiftly removed thereafter on a 40 day probate petition by the beneficiary, ISKCON, for admittedly being “inimical” to the beneficiary. Moreover, and most importantly, revalidation of the BBT would NOT have resulted in the legal right to print the pre-1978 works — a primary litigation goal.
Of course, it was highly doubtful that Hansadutta dasa would have been permitted by the court to serve as a BBT trustee in any event, in part because of his continuing criminal problems. Even as late as 1998 during the BBTI case, he pled out to felony weapons violations and ‘driving under the influence’ charges. And, during the pendency of the BBTI case he was sentenced and incarcerated in a county facility and served time. All of this information is, of course, a matter of public record — but the information would have been disastrous if it came out during the case.
As regards the BBT and the BBTI:
For legal reasons involving intellectual property right law — a discussion of which is outside the scope of this brief letter — the BBTI is now an agent of the BBT — the BBTI does not own the copyrights. Moreover, the BBTI is not, as suggested, “ISKCON operating under another name.” The BBT (and its agent the BBTI) has nothing to do with ISKCON, other, that is, than the obvious and legally intimate relationship of a trust to its beneficiary.
Therefore, the BBT (not the BBTI) holds the copyrights to the pre-1978 literary works of His Divine Grace, which is the precise legal arrangement personally made by His Divine Grace and which was confirmed by the court in the 1998 BBTI v Kary litigation.
Thus, whether or not there is support from within ISKCON for editing changes is not exactly a controlling issue since the BBT is legally independent of ISKCON and the GBC. This latter point — that the BBT is independent of ISKCON — was an express condition of the trust document executed by Srila Prabhupada in Los Angeles in 1972 (and was reaffirmed in the BBTI v Kary case in 1998). Of course, if ISKCON rallied for the pre-1978 books and pressure was placed on the BBT to only print the pre-1978 books, the BBT would have to take note — but the GBC cannot just flip a switch to make it happen.
As regards Krishna Books Inc:
Krishna Books Inc (“KBI”) is not an “arm” of the BBT any more than Hansadutta dasa was ever its “head.” Rather, KBI is an independent nonprofit licensee authorized to print and publish the pre-1978 literary works of His Divine Grace. KBI is controlled by a nine member board of directors — and not, obviously, by any one person.
That I now personally represent the BBT on a number of intellectual property rights issues (after litigating the case which revalidated the BBT) should not exactly be earth shattering news. After all, supporting the validity of the BBT copyrights was Srila Prabhupada’s desire and is the same legal umbrella under which KBI now takes shelter.
Considering these points, various conclusions in your writings need reevaluation in light of actual historical facts.
First, there was no “KBI fiasco,” as was melodramatically written. Rather, after expensive, time-consuming litigation supported by dozens of concerned devotees spanning almost a decade, the right to print and publish the pre-1978 works of His Divine Grace was legally secured. If you question that point, kindly ask any of the devotees copied with this email (Nara Narayana Vishwakarma Prabhu, Nischintya Prabhu, Puranjana Prabhu, Veda Guhya Prabhu and Yasodanandan Prabhu) who can each verify their own personal involvement and who are each well aware of the broad-based effort which was made to secure the KBI publishing license. There are, of course, many others who played important roles in this effort as well.
Thus, the fact that there has been post-settlement litigation which resolved various legal issues regarding KBI among it’s board members only serves to confirm its authenticity and validity. Now, no one person can claim sole ownership and control of the license, as was the unfortunate scenario in early 1999, when Hansadutta dasa and his two acolytes took that unsupportable legal position (and were firmly shot down by the court).
Second, KBI’s board has never “indicated” that it does not intend to print books. After all the time, effort and money to obtain the license such a course of inaction would be absurd. Rather, it takes a great deal of time and money to create a working organizational infrastructure to finance, arrange for, print, stock, sell and distribute books. KBI is self-financed by its own board members. No one on the board receives any compensation. All legal work is performed on a pro bono basis. Moreover, obtaining a 501(c)3 exempt status for a religious publishing entity is no walk in the park. That process was only recently and successfully completed after a long, involved, time-consuming interchange with the IRS.
After hundreds of thousands of dollars and literally thousands of lawyer hours litigating complex trust and copyright issues, along with literally thousands of hours contributed by many devotees, KBI can only be viewed as a labor of love by all concerned. KBI is not a public utilities company which one calls to complain when the lights don’t go on. If you want to see books printed then support the legal process we have in hand. All of Srila Prabhupada’s disciples have a responsibility to support the printing and distribution of His Books — not just the ones who already paid a price to establish a conduit to do so.
The tentative publishing schedule this year alone (2001) provides for at least one paperback per quarter and the printing of a hard and soft cover 1000 page, 48 color print, 6×9, 1972 McMillan edition of the Bhagavad-gita As It Is. Volume One of Krishna Book may also be printed this calendar year, or early next year. “Easy Journey to Other Planets” was printed in the first quarter, and “Krishna, The Reservoir of Pleasure” is scheduled for printing in the second quarter.
Third, it should be obvious there would be no necessity for KBI to print the pre-1978 works if the BBT decided to do so. In the meanwhile, however, no one has articulated a serious rationale for not supporting the effort of KBI, the licensee of Srila Prabhupada’s revalidated BBT, to print the pre-1978 works. Srila Prabhupada wanted all of us to work together, he wanted the publishing efforts concentrated under the umbrella of his BBT and he wanted his pre-1978 works in print. Now that there is a non divisive, legal conduit to do just that why not cooperate and help push the cart ?
I hope this brief discussion helps to shed some light on these issues, and that you consider supporting KBI’s continuing efforts (under the umbrella of Srila Prabhupada’s original BBT) to print and publish the pre-1978 works of His Divine Grace.
With regards,
Gupta dasa
About the Author
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Hare Krishna Madhudvisa Prabhu, my obeisances, Jaya Srila Prabhupada!
Please run another printing of Srila Prabhupada’s original books, specifically the 1972-77 30 volume Srimad Bhagavatam . These books are very much needed in human society,and help us associate with Srila Prabhupada through his vāni. Also, I have a suggestion: please add dust jackets to the bhagavatam books,and all the books which originally came with dust jackets. It is my another request that you publish these books with the same dimensions as the first edition,so that the reprints are facsimile copies of the originaldadditionally, I humbly request you to publish the Bona fide, unedited but unfinished books(Narada bhakti sutra, Mukunda mala stotra,etc) as they are ,so that we may benefit from these few verses,which though not completed,WILL bring about spiritual revolution.
Yours Faithfully,
Bhadrish
Since Veda Guhya has closed down Krishna Books Inc there is no mechanism any more for publishing Srila Prabhupada’s original books. Also he has taken all the Laksmi for the next printing {$200,000+) for himself so there are no funds for printing. So I can not print it. If you want the books Prabhu I suggest you print them yourself. You are not living in the real world, what you are proposing is not practical. Yes, Prabhupada would like it for sure, but a set of books like that comes in 3 boxes typically. At least 2 boxes, so shipping cost to anywhere would be Horrible. But anyhow find the almost $200,000 yourself and print it Prabhu. What can I say? There should be some gratitude at least for what we have printed and some push-back against the BBT for stopping the printing of Prabhupada’s original books…. It was, and would be possible if the Prabhupada world-wide temple structure still existed. Books could be shipped to the temples direct from the printers and distributed locally by the devotees. But that does not exist anymore. These days we would have to depend on mail order sales, and the weight of what you are proposing would make that virtually impossible.
Hare Krishna Prabhu, so then since there is no means of reprinting, we now have to read from the scans of the first editions,or use Prabhupada books.com . Also Prabhu, I didn’t know about the ground reality,and I was in thought that books are still printed as shown in ‘As Brilliant As The Sun’,and I apologise for offering impractical suggestions. Please forgive me if I have offended you.
All Glories to Srila Prabhupada.
Yes Prabhu, of course I will still try for printing somehow but right now I can not see the path to that. But who knows, after all Krishna is the Supreme Personality of Godhead and He can do anything. But you are correct, now PrabhupadaBooks.com and the pdf downloads become much more important, which is why I have been working on improving PrabhupadaBooks.com and most importantly getting the actual verified first-edition book text there. We have the pdf downloads available here on Krishna.org of course at:
https://krishna.org/category/free-pdf-downloads/
The format of that page is not very good and I need to fix it up, but all the books are there, if not on the first page, on the second page, I will fix it up in the near future also.
But nothing replaces the real printed books. They are something tangible, something permanent. All these digital files and websites are more or less transient and depend on the computers working and the internet working and so many things can happen to stop access to digital systems. But printed books, they are tangible and you hold in your hand and no one can take it away…
The actual offset lithographic printing process is identical today as to what you see in “As Brilliant as the Sun”. The only real difference on the presses is computerized control, even in the late 1970s they were starting to get huge and expensive computer boards to go in the presses to control the water and ink flow which is a very delicate thing. The lithographic process requires a plate and that plate has areas that need to attract the ink, the printing areas, and the other areas need to attract the water, because the ink is oil, and oil and water don’t mix. So before the modern computer controlled presses getting the proper balance of ink and water consistently all over the big pages they print was very tricky. And color, of course that is 4 or 6 times more complex because there are four or six different inks needed for color printing.
What has changed a lot is the typesetting. Back then in the “Brilliant as the Sun” days, they had no computers as we have today, no memory to store a book in a computer for sure then. All they had is the typesetting machines that took input from those cassette tapes produced by the ladies typing on their electric typewriters. That was, of course, very advanced for the time. Those tapes ran a typesetting machine, but that was ultimately an analogue machine that had a circular wheel of film with all the characters on it which would spin around and it would expose the bromide [light sensitive paper] one character at a time and that would need to be processed, but done in the machine, a simple process, so the typesetting machines output strips of text only which had to be manually cut and pasted onto the pages, like you see them doing.
But now we have typesetting programs like InDesign that we use and it makes it very easy to format the books and we provide the digital files to the printer and they can go straight to outputting the final printing plates. They have to do a page imposition to put all the pages in the correct places on the big sheets of paper but that is more-or-less automatic. And we can do images and Sanskrit and Bengali characters and everything like this, and printers basically automatically just output the printing plates and put them on the press and print the books. Of course there is a huge amount of checking, they check before, then they provide blueprints, which are not blue anymore, they are printed out on a laser printer, they are called ‘proofs’ now and we have to check and approve the proofs and sign and if there is any mistake on what we have approved it is not the printers fault, it is our fault… So the typesetting / prepress is still a process but it is not anywhere near as time consuming as it was in “As Brilliant as the Sun”.
For these replica books it can be very tedious, like Srimad-Bhagavatam first 13 volumes original printing was very bad quality and we had to scan, of course, from the original books, and then fix all the broken characters one by one, in Photoshop, was taking up to half a day for one page at times. So that was a painful and tedious process. But it is important to reproduce the original books in their original format, fonts, paging, etc, etc…
But overall once we have the digital files actually printing the books is not difficult for the printers these days. They just put the files in their page imposition program and output the plates and put on the press and print. It is a bit more complex than this but that is the simplified idea.
The problem we have at the moment is we don’t have the structure, Krishna Books Inc, to print within. That is the real issue. And that is due to the BBT’s massive attacks at the original teachings of Srila Prabhupada. They don’t want Prabhupada’s original books available because they plan massive changes to the books and having the original books available after they make massive changes would be very embarrassing for them. So they are making an incredibly intense attack on any source of the original teachings of Srila Prabhupada. Because honestly ISKCON / BBT they don’t like Prabhupada’s teachings. They need something softer, something more like mundane religion, you know, just going to the temple on Sundays and giving money like the other religions do. But that is not Prabhupada’s movement and if anyone were to read Prabhupada’s original teachings, they would know that. Hence the massive attack on Prabhupada’s original teachings by ISKCON / BBT…
Hare Krishna Prabhu dandwat pranam
How can I order KBI Books in wholesale for distribution
You can order at:
https://krishnastore.com/books-wholesale-om-21_37.html
In India there are not many titles available, but other countries we have a better range.
Hare Krishna Prabhu Ji,
I want to get Srimad Bhagavatam printed in India by Thompson Press. How can I get nonprofit license from KBI and original pdf files for getting it printed?
Your servant,
Kamal
You need to purchase it from Krishna Books Inc who are licensed to print it.
It is already available, it is already in print. Just order it at https://krishnastore.com
Hare Krishna!
All Glories to Srila Prabhupada!
I wanted to enquire regarding donating to KBI for printing original Srila Prabhupada books. Can I portal or website be provided for donating?
Thank you!
We suggest you purchase Srila Prabhupada’s books at:
https://krishnastore.com/books-srila-prabhupada-om-21_38.html
Make sure you have all of Prabhupada’s books and if you have them all purchase more and distribute to your friends and family.
Also you can purchase other items on https://krishnastore.com, that will help us in printing Srila Prabhupada’s original books.
Hare Krishna devotees, i want to ask that can i get kindle variant of all KBI books.
https://krishnastore.com/srila-prabhupadas-books-for-amazon-kindle-h-krishna-1570.html
Dandavat Pranam. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.
We have just completed the translation of Bhagavad Gita, thé original édition into Yoruba, an official language in Nigeria. This is the first in an attempt to translate Srila Prabhupada books into African languages.
Please can yu bless our effort by giving us yur légal permission to carry on.
Yur servant
Varaha das
I have requested a receipt for my recent purchase several times without response. I ordered 4 cases of soft cover Bhagavad Gita’s for the Jefferson County Detentions Center, at a cost of $398.12. This order has been delivered, but you have not sent me an invoice for my records.
We have sent you a PDF copy of the receipt for your order. Thank you very much for your order. If there is still any problem please contact the helpdesk at:
https://krishnastore.com/support/
I love the original Prabhuada books! Please keep printing in exactly the same format as they were originally published!And keep me posted on current releases!
I am now looking for the Delhi Bhagavatams!!!
Let me know if you have any?
Thanks,
Your servant,
gmuni d
Hare Krishna Garagamuni Prabhu
Yes. I agree. Prabhupada’s original books are totally wonderful… Yes, great idea to reprint Delhi Bhagavatam, but no plan to do this right now. I will try to suggest it maybe next year, we will see how things go.
Chant Hare Krishna and be happy!
Madhudvisa dasa
When will a Spanish version of the original gita as it is become available? Thank you
I have no idea… Hopefully soon, but I do not know anything about it.
I have many hard bound Krishna books for sale. Anyone like to make an offer? Contact me at reeyag@gmail.com.
They are in mint condition. Most of the books are still wrapped in pastic. Lately I can not go for book distribution for health reasons and I really need Laxmi for medicine.
Here are example titles –
Sri Isopnisad, Science of Self Realization, Lord Caitanya’s teachings.
Are these pre-1978 books ?
yes
Hare Krishna
I need these books for distribution so what’s the available quantity and price?
Hare Krishna!
You can get cases of Srila Prabhupada’s original books at the wholesale prices at:
http://krishnastore.com/books-wholesale-om-21_37.html
Chant Hare Krishna and be happy!
Madhudvisa dasa
Dear Madhudvisa Prabhu,
After going through the following article
http://www.iskcon-truth.com/gupta-cheated-hansadutta.html
I am bit confused.
I have books from Krishna Books Inc. and not Krsna Book Inc.
Are they original?
Sincerely,
Amit
amit.chaudhari@yahoo.com
Hare Krishna Amit
Hansadutta Prabhu never actually printed any original Prabhupada books although the court case that established Krishna Books Inc. was his 1996 case where BBT took him to court for printing Prabhupada’s Bhagavad-gita in Chinese.
So there were two KBIs at that time many years ago and as the history has evolved it was Krishna Books Inc who have ended up bringing back into print almost all of Srila Prabhupada’s books. So yes. Certainly. All the books printed by Krishna Books Inc. are Prabhupada’s original books. So get them and read them…
As far as other websites I have no idea. The authorized place to get Prabhupada’s original books is:
https://krishnastore.com