Monday, December 29, 2003
The man is in debt to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
NORTH CAPE MAY, N.J. (AP) -- Christmas may be commercialized, but that doesn't mean Ronald M. Clancy can make a buck on it.
Clancy quit his job five years ago to devote himself full-time to the pursuit that had taken up much of his time since 1989: assembling and selling the greatest collection of Christmas music ever.
Clancy, 59, has self-published three sets of books and compact discs chronicling the history of the genre from the birth of Christ to secular songs made famous by Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole.
Each set contains a hardcover book with a historical overview and a history of each song in the collection. There are CDs with recordings of the songs, and two of the sets have songbooks.
"It's a beautiful package," said Greg Loescher, editor of Goldmine, a magazine for music collectors that gave Clancy's work a long and glowing review. "There's no question about it. How many of these is he going to be able to sell?"
So far, not nearly enough.
In debt
The venture has put Clancy $600,000 in debt to investors, contractors and 18 credit-card companies. And he filed earlier this year for bankruptcy. Sitting in the small one-story house he shares with his schoolteacher wife, Clancy's face gets long when he mentions that.
"I can't tell you how upset I am that I owe them money," he said.
And that financial mess is holding up publication of volumes four through 10 of his planned collection.
The author/compiler's following may be a small subset of the millions of people nationwide who buy Christmas music each year, but it's devoted.
Suzanne Healy of Pottstown, Pa., called Clancy to order Volume 4 this year, but was sad to learn it was on hold.
"I usually get about a dozen and everyone I've given one to, they've never seen anything like them," Healy said.
Clancy has always loved Christmas music. He grew up at St. Paul's Asylum for Orphans in Philadelphia, which in 1955 featured a picture of him and other boys singing before a stained-glass nativity scene.
At George Washington University in the 1960s, Clancy earned a degree in journalism and dreamed of becoming a Capitol Hill staffer. He ended up as an executive recruiter.
Starting out
By the early 1980s, Clancy was a serial joiner of music-by-mail clubs and found himself with, among other things, an impressive Christmas collection. Then he wondered, "How did Christmas music really begin?"
In museums and libraries, he dug and dug. He secured rights to songs and art that illustrates them.
"I'm very conscientious," Clancy said. "Very organized."
Clancy published "Best-Loved Christmas Carols" in 2000, "American Christmas Favorites" in 2001 and "Children's Christmas Classics" last year.
He has plans for volumes of sacred Christmas music, German Christmas music and a giant tome containing all the CDs and all nine volumes of text.
But for now, his tale is a lesson of business failure. A friend loaned him $300,000 to print copies of his works in 2001. But without a promotion budget, he has struggled.
He did well hawking the collections on the QVC cable shopping channel when he was on one morning but did poorly when he was on in the middle of the night.
He's sold about 10,000 copies of his works and has twice that many in a Pennsylvania warehouse. If he sells them all, he breaks even or better.
XClancy's Web site: http://www.christmasclassics.com.