At the beginning of 1517, Martin Luther was virtually unknown. A nobody. A non-influencer. Just another monk, in another monastery, doing monkish things. But later that year, on October 31, Martin Luther posted 95 “theses” on the door of the Wittenberg church. Theses were a list of items for an academic disputation. Although the theses were nailed to the church at Wittenberg, his intended audience was his fellow professors at the University. He was inviting them to a good old-fashioned verbal brawl, a roll-up-your-sleeves and get down in the mud kind of debate. Little did he know that he was starting the Reformation not with “here I stand,” but “here I pound.”
The ideas on that one sheet of linen rag kicked up a cloud of theological dust. Soon, not just monks and professors, but the average Joe and Josephine in the church pew were talking about Luther and his “theses.” Luther was eager to follow up on his initial volley and take aim at the many targets the corrupt Roman Catholic church provided. But there was a problem. How was he going to spread the word? Could he have done it with ink and paper? Yes, but it would be very, very slow—emphasis on the slow!
But the Lord, in His providence, had provided a solution.
About 70 years before Martin Luther hammered his nail, Johannes Gutenberg put together a contraption called a printing press. Although the early presses could produce only up to 240 impressions (a single sheet) per hour, that beat copying articles, pamphlets, and books by hand. The printing press was the obvious solution. However, as is often the case in our fallen world, solutions come gift-wrapped with problems of their own.
First, printing was (and remains) a risky business. What printer in their right business mind would publish the works of an unknown, a former monk, a rabble-rouser? Plus, this up-and-comer just happened to be poking a stick in the eye of your best customer—the Roman Catholic church.
In 1500, 50% of all printing was done for the Roman Catholic church.1 What were they printing? Indulgences, sermons about indulgences, papal bulls about indulgences. What was an indulgence? It was “a way to reduce the amount of punishment one has to undergo for (forgiven) sins.”2 Say you slap down three florins.3 You would receive a certificate, backed by the full faith and credit of the Roman Catholic Church, stating that you had received a partial or full pardon for your sins. It turned into big business because you could also buy an indulgence for dead Uncle Harry, who, knowing Uncle Harry, needed every help he could get to reduce his sentence and escape from purgatory.
Despite the risk of angering the Pope, printers started taking Luther’s business. What changed things? One major factor was the economics of the early printing business. By the early 1500s, the primary challenge for printers was not the technical aspect but sales. Printers had to figure out what people would buy and then calculate how many copies to print of their hoped-for bestseller. Luther, with his ideas, created demand. People wanted to buy what he wrote. But there were other reasons, besides learning the Bible and the doctrines of the faith, why people wanted to make such a purchase. Luther sold books because he was the celebrity of the day. He was everybody’s favorite topic of gossip. They wanted a front-row seat on one of the great conflicts of that or any other age: a little-known monk taking on one of the most powerful men on the planet, the mighty Pope.
Meanwhile, Germans were beginning to sour on indulgences. The Pope was selling indulgences—or more technically, asking for donations in exchange for said certificates—to finance the refurbishment of St. Peter’s Basilica. Construction began in 1506, but by 1517 sales were lagging. Therefore, the Pope declared that the previously sold indulgences were on hiatus. In other words, they did not work while the current indulgences were being marketed. So, if you died when your purchased indulgence went on hiatus, well, off to purgatory, you go! (That did not make many people very happy, especially the relatives of dead Uncle Harry.) But the Roman Catholic church was tone deaf. They recruited Tetzel, who was a German Dominican friar and preacher. As a master salesman, he was appointed the Grand Commissioner for Indulgences. He was also the first to respond to Luther’s criticisms. In doing so, he unwittingly ignited a paper war. Tetzel made a crucial first misstep. He wrote in Latin, the language of professors, scholars, and churchmen. Martin Luther responded to Tetzel in German, the language of the people. It was called Eynn Sermon von dem Ablasz und Gnade (Sermon on Indulgence and Grace). The pamphlet was an instant hit and was reprinted 14 times in 1518 alone in print runs of at least 1,000 copies. It has been described as “the world’s first printed bestseller.”4 Tetzel’s rebuttal flopped. The first edition was not even reprinted.
As a smart guy, Luther recognized that printing could play a crucial role in promoting his reforms, and he made a few simple yet revolutionary decisions, printing and marketing his writings in a manner unlike anyone else.
First, he concentrated on printing pamphlets instead of books. Before Luther, books were nearly the only material printed. And they were huge, as in physically humongous. The average medieval book had a wingspan of about 20 inches when open.5 But Luther’s pamphlets were small. They were also short; they did not have very many pages. Of his 45 writings during the early years of the Reformation, 21 were eight pages or less.
Second, he gave the pamphlets relatively brief titles. For example, as mentioned, his first reply to Tetzel was called “Sermon on Indulgence and Grace.” Other pamphleteers often went overboard. For example, a treatise by Duke Heinrich was called:
Well-Grounded, Steadfast, Grave, True, Godly, Christian, Nobly-Inclined Duplicae Against the Elector of Saxony’s Second Defamatory, Baseless, Fickle, Fabricated, Ungodly, Unchristian, Drunken, God-Detested Treatise
Not to be outdone, the Elector of Saxony responded to Duke Heinrich with the modestly titled:
True, Steadfast, Well-Grounded, Christian and Sincere Reply to the Shameless, Calphurnic Book of Infamy and Lies by the Godless Accursed, Execrable Defamer, Evil-Working Barabbas, Also Whore-Addicted Holophernes of Braunschweig, Who Calls Himself Duke Heinrich the Younger
It was as if they wanted to cram the table of contents into the title itself.
Third, short pamphlets meant they were cheap, equivalent to a couple of pints of beer. Luther was so popular that many of the poor were willing to forgo their (daily, weekly, monthly?) cold ones to get their hands on Luther’s latest.
Fourth, Luther had an eye for layout and design. Luther was a hands-on author who would make trips to the printer shop and make changes, asking for different typefaces and using white space between the paragraphs to make reading easier on the eye—basic layout principles that are now taken for granted.
Fifth, although he had his eye on princes, he wrote for peasants. He made sure his tracts were easy to understand. Luther wrote scholarly works in Latin for professors of theology and the clergy. However, he also possessed a talent for communicating with ordinary people. He wrote in German in a clear and simple style so everyone could understand.
Add these up, and Luther created what we call a “brand.” The “Luther Brand” was most clearly evident in his books. Until Luther, no author thought to use a distinctive style for their books, a design that would be easily identified as their work. Luther’s books did that. In the accompanying photo, all the elements of Luther’s brand are on display:
- The author’s name is in the middle (we take it for granted, but the author’s name was not always on the cover). Early works often buried Luther’s name amid a dense block of text; sometimes, they even split his name over two lines. Printers soon recognized the power of what we call “name recognition,” and his name was prominently displayed.
- The name and place (Wittenberg) where it was printed are listed at the bottom.
- A distinctive title was placed in a box with a frame, in the clear—no art in the background to interfere—and with art around the box.
Luther’s works were popular, and with these distinctive touches, sales grew and grew. Between 1521 and 1525, when the pamphlet war was at its height, Luther and his supporters outpublished their opponents by a margin of 9 to 1. In the space of barely a year, as Luther himself modestly observed, “it has pleased heaven that I should become the talk of the people.”6 In the process, Luther’s image became as well-known and recognizable as his name, thanks to the master artist Lucas Cranach.
This famous Reformation-era painter created many of the wood carvings and etchings for Luther’s book covers, and in the process, benefited monetarily. More important than the book covers were his paintings of Luther, including the one that most people familiar with Luther are likely to recognize. Notice how Cranach’s painting portrays Luther … the man has a double chin. Clearly, this was a man who enjoyed his beer! The Protestant Reformation was in good, if not
chubby, hands.
The Lord called Martin Luther to be, among many other things, a writer and a one-man publishing conglomerate. “Between 1517 and 1546, Wittenberg publishers turned out at least 2,721 works, an average of 91 per year. This represents around three million individual copies and includes many of the milestone works of the era, including editions of Luther’s German Bible.” Luther’s work was 30% of the total.
To fulfill that calling, God gave Luther many gifts, one of which was the gift of marketing—even if he could not put that modern name to it. We are still reaping the benefits today, including his music, theology, pamphlets, books, and marketing—design, graphic layout, the importance of pictures, and the value of a brand.
“Luther was the most successful author since the invention of printing. His output far outstripped any living contemporary, both in the number of his published works and in their success in the marketplace. His sales outstripped all the ancients, even staples of the school curriculum such as Cicero. In the sixteenth century, printers put out almost 5,000 editions of Luther’s works; a further 3,000 can be added if one reckons with other projects with which he was involved, such as the Luther Bible.”
Kurt Snow
Sacramento, CA
First published in The Outlook, Oct. 2025
1 Pettegree, Andrew (2015), Brand Luther: How an Unheralded Monk Turned His Small Town into a Center of Publishing, Made Himself the Most Famous Man in Europe–and Started the Protestant Reformation (Penguin Publishing Group). Kindle Edition. Unless otherwise noted, all the information and quotes in this article are from this book.
2 Edward Peters, A Modern Guide to Indulgences: Rediscovering This Often Misinterpreted Teaching (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 2008). page 13.
3 An Italian coin, the first mass-produced coin in Europe.
4 Colin Moore, Propaganda Prints: A History of Art in the Service of Social and Political Change (London: A&C Black Publishers Limited, 2010).
5 “Medieval Desktops,” Medieval Books, accessed June 28, 2025, https://medievalbooks.nl/2014/10/10/medieval-desktops/
6 Tom Holland, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World (New York: Basic Books, 2019). Kindle Edition. page 311.