Update 12-28: Michael Hyatt posted a follow-up article on his blog with the Thomas Nelson Top 100.
Michael Hyatt, the president and CEO of Thomas Nelson isn’t exactly Toto, and the American publishing business certainly isn’t Oz. But his blog does a great job of pulling back the curtain to demystify the Christian publishing world.
I need to come clean about what I’m doing in this blog post. Partially, it is just a summary and reorganization of some things Michael Hyatt says. But I also want to respond to his comments debunking bestseller lists. From the New York Times list to the USA Today list to Evangelical Christian Publisher Association’s list, he explains what book markets they include and what book markets they don’t.
He also touches on the concept of sell-in vs. sell-through. Most writer’s don’t realize that they have to market their book at two levels.
Assuming I ever get published for example, I have to first sell the stores on my book. Convince them that readers will buy it. (Obviously it is in a publisher’s best interest to help me out a little on this front.) Second, I have to sell the readers. Otherwise the book will just sit on the shelf for 90 days and get sent back to the publisher.
For me, Michael Hyatt’s discussion ends up being one that gives a fantastic overview of what three big markets Christian writers can hope to address:
- general market bookstores (Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Books-a-Million)
- mass market outlets (Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Target, Costco, and Sam’s)
- Christian bookstores (by which he seems to mean CBA stores only)
That was the summary. Now, here are my two specific responses. First, Mr. Hyatt, thanks for blogging. Your transparent leadership is an inspiration. (It’s shameless really, but nevertheless true.)
Second, Thomas Nelson and all of the Christian presses seem to have a lot of faith that the CBA will continue to sell books. I hope they’re right, but I have understood that the CBA stores are struggling tremendously. After all, people think they don’t really need them anymore.
They have succeeded in making Christian writing mainstream again. This is a good thing in some ways, but it means people can grab the latest Rick Warren or Max Lucado at Wal-Mart. The mass market outlets carry Christian books now. The general market stores carry them, too. Sure, these stores don’t have the depth of selection that a CBA store might have. But sources like Amazon.com and even Christianbook.com allow readers to order any book they want. Depth of selection is only a few clicks away.
Besides that, CBA stores don’t even seem to have much depth of selection anymore. Compass is now a Christian Trade Company, like a hallmark with a book section. I’m not knocking Compass; I think what they’ve done is clever, and I hope it works.
And they are struggling. Our local CBA store in Kerrville was run by former CBA president, Glenn McGinnis. It was a sad day last year when The Dove’s Nest collapsed. (It was an even sadder day when Glenn McGinnis died shortly after closing his store. I didn’t know him, but I saw how respected he was in our community.)
I don’t mean this question disrespectfully, but I’m curious.
If Thomas Nelson gets 34% of its sales from CBA stores and these stores are struggling, what does that mean for them as a publisher? What does it mean for writers trying to break into the Christian market?
Perhaps CBA would respond to all of this with something from Mark Twain: The news of our death has been greatly exaggerated.
I certainly hope so.
9 comments ↓
This is a great question. (Maybe you could get Al Hsu to come over and answer it.)
Good idea, L.L. I’ll go ask.
Okay, this is totally off topic. I’m reading your comments here, and the radio is talking about how the cherry trees are starting to blossom in NYC. Cherry trees. Blossoming. NYC. January. WHO STOLE JANUARY?!
Hmmm . . . well, I don’t know that I have any brilliant insights here. I agree that CBA stores are in crisis. What seems to have happened in recent years is that the smaller ones have died off while the stronger ones have retooled themselves and found ways to keep themselves in business. The problem is always shelf space and backlist; it’s very expensive to have a book sit on a shelf for months if it doesn’t sell. I remember that my wife and I couldn’t find her seminary textbooks at the local Christian bookstore, but they were in stock at the local Borders. (Though Borders has also recently cut back on how many religion titles they carry.)
The increasing reality for all bookstores (Christian or not) is that their market share is being eroded by big box stores on the one hand and online booksellers on the other. As much as I want to support local mom & pop bookstores, in a long tail world, all too often they don’t carry the niche titles people are looking for, and it makes no sense to most customers to special order them though a local store when you can just order them online from Amazon.
That being said, I think online bookselling is making smaller books and authors more viable. The kind of publishing that my company does is quite different than what Hyatt is doing at Thomas Nelson - their economics are such that they need big hits, which means that they need front table placements in Borders or encaps in Wal-Mart. But niche publishing and viral marketing and blogging provides more opportunities to all the authors that the big publishers just can’t publish viably. Smaller publishers can do specialized books with targeted audiences. Though ideally we need a mix of niche books and wider-audience books to keep things financially healthy.
(BTW, I suspect Hyatt might say that the Lucados of the world let them take a chance with the Blue Like Jazzes of the world, but it’s also true that if Blue Like Jazz had not become a huge surprise hit for them, there’s no way they would have continued to publish more books by Don Miller.)
As I’ve said elsewhere, I think Christian publishing will continue to get bigger and smaller at the same time. Big publishers will keep on trying to make big hits and more Purpose Driven Lifes and Your Best Life Nows, while at the same time more independent and alternative Christian books will bubble up from the margins. Again, I don’t think I have a whole lot of brilliant insight to share here, but I’m optimistic enough to believe that Christian book publishing is sustainable enough to keep me employed in the years to come!
L.L., what’s a cherry blossom? All we have in Texas is Cedar blossoms. And they give me Cedar Fever. (Thus my lethargic blogging this week.)
Al, you rock. I didn’t even get to formally ask what your thoughts were! That’s a good point that the publishers don’t really need to depend fully on the Christian book stores. Though it seems a bit sad.
Would it be wrong to say that Christian bookstores are ultimately responsible for making the Christian publishers what they are today?
Now for the publishers to survive and let the book stores die, well, it just seems sad. I know it’s economics and all. And I certainly don’t blame the publishers.
And of course, since you work at IVP, you can stand tall and proud, never having published anything like Your Best Life Now.
Marcus, very interesting post.
Oh, and L. L. asked who stole January? Colorado.
Becky
Oops, I meant “endcaps,” not “encaps.” Even editors need editors . . .
And Christian bookstores and Christian publishing grew up together in the 60s, 70s and 80s, so you could say that CBA stores are at least partially responsible for the growth and maturing of the Christian publishing industry, in a mutual kind of way. It’s certainly been a chicken-and-the-egg kind of partnership. Alas, physical retail in general (not just bookstores) has been reeling from the advent of online selling.
Another lament I would add is that the qualitative nature of bestsellers has dramatically shifted in the past thirty years or so. IVP’s bestselling titles over the decades have been classics like Basic Christianity by John Stott, The God Who Is There by Francis Schaeffer, Knowing God by J. I. Packer and The Universe Next Door by Jim Sire. Substantive stuff. I’m thrilled that we’ve sold well over a million copies of Packer. What’s interesting is that The Universe Next Door was originally a “general trade” book as we classify them, but in recent years, we’ve recategorized it as an academic book. So what used to be standard reading level for the general public is now perceived as too heady and too academic for the masses. (The funny thing is that when we try to publish “popular” books, they usually flop miserably!)
Becky, I accidentally forgot to approve your comment. Sorry! Looking forward to the next blog tour. I need to install a link for that…
Al, thanks for the follow up comment! Your inside knowledge at IVP is wonderful to hear. What you say about the chicken and the egg relationship makes a lot of sense. Silly me for believing the simplified version of events.
Online selling is affecting bookstores now. How many years before online publishing begins to affect publishers? Or am I just indulging my penchant for sci-fi?
Online publishing is certainly affecting print book publishers now. Quick example - one of my authors wanted to make significant changes to her book at the second printing. When we’re used to an immediately revisable and updatable blogosphere and Wikipedia world, it’s counterintuitive for a book to be static. Authors and readers are coming to expect more fluid updating of print resources. Another example of this is the fact that Friedman’s The World Is Flat came out in hardcover in 2005, and then came out in hardcover again in 2006 with expanded and updated material. The changes didn’t wait for the move to paperback. It happened while the book was still in hardcover.
Something else is that we’re having more and more books with online supplemental material that goes beyond the print book. One of my authors had so much more stuff that he wanted to say that we posted a 70-page PDF online for free. Other books have free bonus chapters, others have extension blogs or sites. In a Web 2.0 world, everyone has to think book-plus, beyond the book.