ABSTRACT
Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, was arguably the most innovative promoter of religion of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Long before the current explosion in religious publishing, she used a number of now-commonplace marketing techniques to publicize and sell her belief system. She distributed her book Science and Health in a secular bookstore; she aggressively used endorsements on the cover her book; and in a particularly innovative move, she designed Science and Health to look like a Bible, thus marrying the attributes and benefi ts associated with that best-selling tome to her own (Tickle, n.d.). In terms of distribution, Eddy again showed her ingenuity. She created Christian Science Reading Rooms, quiet spaces similar to public libraries where anyone could sit and read her books for free. Some have even called the Reading Rooms the fi rst franchise, yet another marketing innovation.
