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Think About This
The Competition
By Mark Roth on May 3, 2010 at 5:53 pm
Anabaptist Bookstore consists of three primary sites:
We launched our Web-only business on January 1, 1998. We started as a one-man operation run on a shoestring. I’m still the only full-time worker. My wife and daughters do packaging and some of the computer work. Dora is the most known to you.
Eventually two of our three main competitors came online. Will I mention them by name and link to them? Sure.
Milestone Ministries came online as a pre-existing, solid, established business. As I understand the arrangement, the owner is assisted by three other full-time workers (one of whom is one of my nephews!). They are a bigger operation than we and much better financed. They probably sell as much in a day as we sell in a week. And they offer very good service.
Some years after a then-Board-member declared they would never have a Web site, Christian Light Publications finally came online as a pre-existing corporation. I suppose we had been online for some ten years before their Web site hit its stride. Compared to us, they are giants, of course. I imagine they sell as much in a day as we sell in a month! (I honestly have no idea.) Their customer service is superb.
Of our three main “competitors,” only Rod and Staff Publishers does not have a Web site. I don’t even know an email address for them!
The “competition” among us is of the friendly, work-together type. Rod & Staff Publishers and Christian Light Publications are our main suppliers. They even do drop shipping for us when we request it. The folks at Milestone Ministries have been helpful the few times we’ve needed to get books faster than our regular suppliers can get them to us. (You see, Milestone is just down the road from us — not much over an hour’s drive.)
Well, with that kind of powerhouse competition, we’re grateful for every customer. We continue to shorten our shipping time and increase our customer service responsiveness. Our roster of unedited customer testimonials continues to grow, presently numbering many hundreds.
If you’re one of those satisfied customers who has said so on our site, thank you very much! I would be very encouraged to have you tell your friends about us — forums, boards, blogs, email, word-of-mouth, social networks.
On the other hand, if you’re a less-than-satisfied customer, I welcome your suggestions for improvement. And if I happen to owe you some sort of remedy, I really want to know so I can work with you to resolve your outstanding issue.
Anabaptist Bookstore is very small by comparison to the other three. But we are committed to rendering excellent service. By the grace of God, we will continue with our improvements in that area.
Now, if you read all this and place an order at www.rodstaff.com/school/ in May 2010, let us know and we will give you a 5% product discount.
Topics: Customer Service, Miscellaneous | No Comments »
Empanadas (Mexican Turnovers)
By Mark Roth on May 1, 2010 at 1:29 pm
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1/2 cup shortening
1/3 cup cold milk
Sift flour, baking powder and salt together in bowl.
Cut in shortening.
Add milk.
Stir into a ball, handling like pie crust.
Roll out thin, cut in 4″ rounds or squares.
Place a spoonful of filling on one half of a round.
Fold over, moisten edges and press firmly so they seal.
Deep fry, or bake 15 to 20 minutes at 400° F.
We like them best baked!
Fillings:
- refried beans, grated cheese and chopped chili peppers
- ground, cooked chicken or beef, sauteed with onion. Add 1/2 tsp. cumin, 1 tsp. chili powder and 1 beaten egg
For sweet turnovers, add:
2 tbsp. sugar to dry ingredients while making dough. Fill with 3 oz. cream cheese blended with 3 tbsp. strawberry preserves (or any other kind), or simply with shredded cheese. Sprinkle empanadas with confectioners’ sugar after they are baked.
source: Heart and Hearth
Topics: Book Excerpts, Recipes | 1 Comment »
Biology: ‘Junk’ DNA
By Mark Roth on May 1, 2010 at 8:40 am
This is actually a month-old story, but I just saw it this morning:
This just in from Nature magazine, of all places.
Not that long ago, biology was considered by many to be a simple science, a pursuit of expedition, observation and experimentation.
Also not that long ago, junk DNA was being defended as an important element of the Darwinian evolution paradigm.
Just one decade of post-genome biology has exploded that view. Biology’s new glimpse at a universe of non-coding DNA — what used to be called ‘junk’ DNA — has been fascinating and befuddling. Researchers from an international collaborative project called the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) showed that in a selected portion of the genome containing just a few per cent of protein-coding sequence, between 74% and 93% of DNA was transcribed into RNA2. Much non-coding DNA has a regulatory role; small RNAs of different varieties seem to control gene expression at the level of both DNA and RNA transcripts in ways that are still only beginning to become clear. “Just the sheer existence of these exotic regulators suggests that our understanding about the most basic things — such as how a cell turns on and off — is incredibly naive,” says Joshua Plotkin, a mathematical biologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
Source: Evolution News & Views: Exploding the Darwin-Friendly Myth of Junk DNA
Suggested Reading: The Biblical View of Science (Lester E. Showalter; Rod and Staff Publishers)
Topics: News Out There | No Comments »