Studying the Publication Status of Religious Stories for Children and Adolescents during 2001-2006

This study was carried out to examine the publication status of religious stories for children and adolescents during 2001-2006. We made use of content analysis. The population under study included 291 religious story books published during 2001-2006, which were retrieved from website of Iranian book house. The obtained results indicated that contribution of men and women to writing these books was 77% and 23%, respectively. Also, their contribution to painting these books was 56.7% and 43.6%, respectively. Publishing religious stories was limited to only seven cities. The highest and the lowest number of these books were published in 2006 and 2003, respectively. The target age groups “B” and “C” related to 47.8% of the studied books. Mean book circulation for all publishers, governmental publishers, and private ones was 7246, 4550, and 7888 copies, respectively. Comparison of mean prices showed that in contrast to governmental publishers, private publishers have annually increased the price of their books.Originality/Value: In spite of good status of reading religious stories books and support of publishing such books by government and governmental institutions, no independent study has been carried out regarding the publication status of religious books. This is the first study of its kind which, in addition to investigating the role of effective organizations in publishing and support of such books, has made some suggestions for familiarity of officials, publishers, and authors of such books with existing limitations and has proposed programs to alleviate the problems in future.