Into the Fire

If you could change five things (or less) in CBA publishing, what would they (it) be? (Unabridged and unedited.)

From Author (Anonymous):

Here's what I think, fairly uncensored. I know a lot of people would not agree with me on this (and I frankly don't like controversy which is why I feel better if you include this anonymously), but if I'm completely honest, these are my thoughts:

First of all, Christian fiction is a scary place for many people. To have a story, you have to have conflict. We are not geared to want conflict. Love your neighbor. Forgive. These all do away with conflict. So we have to fabricate distinctly unChristian scenarios in order to even pull a story off. The fact that any of it is fabricated is also difficult for some people. Some people of faith cannot reconcile reading fiction accounts/lies–even if they eventually tell the truth. Even Biblical stories are not ok with some people–because they tread on sacred ground and fill in with human putty the chinks in the inspired account. Touching that inspired account is very shaky ground for some people. So the CBA–in the fiction sense–is already a place of some controversy and a lot of sensitivities.

To your question: I would change the safety of the CBA. If anything, our fiction should be more radical than mainstream fiction. Our God is.

I understand that readers come to CBA books looking for a safe haven from certain things–sex, violence, language. The thing is, there is a fine line between safety and choosing to live a sheltered, insular existence and denying the truth of life. Not just of fallen life or of sin–but of life in general. In our modern, convenient and in many ways sterile sheltered lives (particularly here in the West), we have forgotten the gory details of so much that constituted life in ancient times and the times of Jesus–even up until the recent past. We have even removed ourselves, many of us, even from the bloody process of procuring the meat we eat! We worship a god who was violently crucified, but many of us are not even willing to consider the horrible violence of that death. If it were laid out in a CBA book in detail, and we didn't know who or what it was, it might very well be banned from some stores as too violent. The sex in the Bible is truly disturbing by CBA standards. (I have never been convinced that Song of Songs is a parallel between Christ and the Church–most possibly because Christ hadn't come yet. I've always considered it Hebrew erotic poetry, no matter how much more acceptable and proper it might seem as a church parallel. But there is nothing proper about God, who is wild. We are the ones with the hangups.) And if people think there aren't violent words and even epithets in the scriptures, then they haven't read their Bible. 😉

In my mind, it's less about fear of glorifying sin and more about the fact that we live sheltered from the gory details of how life really transpires. Part of it is living in a modern society. Part of it is living in the states where I assert that we are, in fact, sheltered from many harsh realities of our day. Jesus didn't come to give us a white, middle class, safe brand of religious lifestyle. He didn't come to bring us religion. He came to save us. That is grossly different from what I see being lived out in the church–and demanded in Christian products that support that religious lifestyle–today.

I believe we are missing the mark, so terribly, as Christians. I believe our energies are so misguided and lacking in priority. Jesus today would never fit in with polite church society. So why are we trying to build and support and bolster even in our art such a safe, polite–and frankly, culturally ethnocentric–society? Because safety is easier and acceptance is more important to us than it ever was to Jesus. And yet, how many Christians will not utter the f-word, but murder people with their words even daily? We are hypocrites, and myopic. We are human. I'm amazed at the love of God for us.

Christian fiction should be radical. Yes, it can explore redemptive themes. But it should not be something that covers our eyes or further digs us in to our safe place. In my mind, Christian fiction can be even just the God-given legacy of creativity in general. But in my mind, so can any writing. Or art. Or cooking. Or dance. Or song. I don't believe it has to tell the redemptive story over and over and over. God created myriad plants, myriad fishes, myriad insects. Out of power, and out of joy and because he could! How are we not to exercise and create–even fearsome creations–out of that legacy? We were created in the image of the most creative being in the universe. It is in our blood. It is not safe.

Summation tomorrow . . .

If you could change five things (or less) in CBA publishing, what would they (it) be? (Unabridged and unedited.)

From Author, Publicist, Reviewer, Dee Stewart:

I would take the State out of CBA:

There is a reason Separation of Church and State exists. For those who are not familiar with the History of Protestantism in America or American Colonial History this country frowned upon religosity running government and government running our religious institutions. However, particularly in CBA, we have forgotten that.

Negating Christians who don't share the same political views is a bad move for CBA. It's divisive. Not all Christians are very conservative Republicans. CBA has lost value with Progressive Christians(a large book buying readership btw) who want to buy Christian products, but don't want to debate politics in order to do it.

Moreover, there is little to none titles written to satisfy this group of readers. They do exist.

2. I would define why CBA is better than ABA.

Although I write for an ABA publisher and provide marketing support to ABA publishers and music labels, I still believe that CBA is the best industry. It is the only industry where people who share the same faith run this industry from the executive level to the sales clerk. However, CBA does a horrid job defining why they are different and better than ABA sellers. They also need to do a better job distributing their brand's messages. They need to do a better job at crisis management, customer relations management, and brand messaging distribution. They also need to live their brand message…They need to operate Christ-like, which brings me to #3.

3. I would do a better job at multicultural diversity in CBA. They need to reconsider their current sales model of catering only to one ethnic enclave in this country. It makes no fiscal sense to not shelve African-American authored titles in cities with a heavy African American Christian readership like Atlanta, GA, Houston, TX, Charlotte, NC, and Washington, DC. Also not including African American authors in current sales literature at chains like LifeWay, Parable and Family is a poor reflection on the state of race in Christianity. This fact imbrues CBA with shame, which works hard against the brand message and thus, CBAs bottom line.

I would contract with more ethnically diverse editors, agents, public relations consultants on how to effectively market to that readership.

I would editors regardless of their race. It's hard for me to believe that not one publishing house has an editor of color on staff by now.

4. CBA stores need to change their design

Currently these stores are designed as book showcase rooms. They do not invite a reader to read, to fellowship with other readers. It's too crowded to move, hang around long enough to buy more. CBA stores run this risk of being display tables for readers, who will ultimately return home and buy the book at discount at Walmart, Sams or online. This fact has already destroyed many mom & pop bookstores.

5. I would change pricing and distribution terms.

CBA needs to work out better terms with their distributors or change distributors. To remain competitive the pricing of these books need to come down.

More CBA publishers need to consider another pricing model for ebooks or they will price themselves out of the market within the next 5 years. If I were CBA, I would design an e-reader devoted to Christian readers with advanced ebook apps that add biblical reference to Christian fiction titles, which would bring a richer CE value to those titles. I would contract with an ebook publisher that can distribute the book in various formats not just DRM.

From Author (Anonymous):

My personal pet peeves as an author:

Publishers, if you want to put out ABC types of fiction, why not stop posting on your web sites that you want XYZ sorts of submissions? Almost every time I've subbed to one of the big publishers, it's been a "no-thanks" because, "Oh, we want historical fiction, just not THIS kind." Or they don't want that country. Or this era. Or this sub-sub-subplot. Please. If you want something specific, tell us the truth. Let's not waste each other's time.

Publishers, also please do NOT expect us to become marketing experts. Hire competent marketing/publicity staff. Let us write the books. We'll come alongside if we're told what's expected of us, but do NOT expect us to reinvent ourselves into something we're not. You don't expect book submissions from the publicity team, do you?

One more suggestion — let's ALL stop using "CBA" as a nickname for the whole Christian fiction reading/writing world. It isn't anymore, if indeed it ever was.

To be continued . . .

If you could change five things (or less) in CBA publishing, what would they (it) be? (Unabridged and unedited.)

From Author J. Mark Bertrand:

There are plenty of things I'd change, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized there's one area that constantly undermines change. So I figured I'd change that …. 🙂

I’m limiting myself to one wave of the magic wand, but it’s a big one. The change that would enable so many other changes:

Let’s change the marketing macrocosm. Book marketing is now “open source,” meaning it’s up to the author to do more and more of the work. In some ways, it always has been. Marketing support makes all the difference in a book’s success. While support doesn’t guarantee a book will hit the bestseller list, lack of support guarantees it won’t, exceptional flukes notwithstanding. Thanks to limited resources, publishers can’t support every book as if it’s destined for immortality. In the old days, this reality meant that a lot of good books would be doomed to obscurity. Then along came blogs and social networking, bringing with them the possibility that authors could do for themselves what publishers couldn’t or wouldn’t. So here we are.

What’s changed, though, isn’t the What or How of marketing, just the Who. In the old days, a frustrated mid-lister could complain that everything would have been different if only the publisher had given him marketing support. Now it’s his own fault. He should have had a more successful blog or posted some viral videos. He should have made himself a celebrity.

The old way wasn’t perfect, but I’m afraid what we’re replacing it with will be even worse. Do publishers need better marketing people? Absolutely. I’m just not convinced they’re going to find them by unloading the problem onto authors. 

So here’s what I would change, if only I could. I’d move the question of how books will be marketed back into the marketing department, where I’d start gauging success by how well the department sells the books that don’t sell themselves. While I would expect a lot of involvement from authors, and would invest more resources in those willing to match my efforts, my marketing people would be driving the story. Like some World War II code breakers, they’d be on a twenty-four/seven quest to discover how to market books in the twenty-first century.

If we changed this one thing, we’d make it easier to change everything. The biggest obstacle to change is failure. When books succeed, we get copycats. If the copycats succeed we get trends. Success drives change, only it tends to be capricious. Good marketing increases the potential for success as much (if not more) than good writing. If you want change anywhere, marketing is a great place to start.

To be continued . . .

If you could change five things (or less) in CBA publishing, what would they (it) be? (Unabridged and Unedited.)

From an Agent (Anonymous):

That all CBA retailers report to the NY Times list. Parable, Mardel, and I believe Family have just begun doing so, which is huge. Hope the other chains and individuals will follow.

That publishers will rethink the royalty rates that they're offering for e-book rights to make them more fair. The "standard" right now is 25% and, frankly, that's ridiculously low.  

Stop discounting front list books – it's killing the publishers (and authors).  You discount something after it’s been out there a while. But to launch a book with deep discounts is having huge repercussions for us all. It's a short term strategy that's having long term effects, and not good ones!

Combined answers from Authors (Anonymous):

Assembly line approach to marketing, wherein most novels receive essentially the same promotional treatment, rather than thinking hard about where to find readers who will be interested in that particular novel, and then devising a creative approach to communicate the essence of that novel to them in an interesting way.

Editors who take months to turn around drafts, then ask authors for changes in weeks.

This is not specific to CBA, but I’d love to see the elimination of returns. It hurts authors.

Publishing novels without a passionate in-house champion. If the     acquisitions editor (who after all presumably convinced a publication board to pay an advance on the story) is not excited enough about a novel to energetically promote it within the publishing house, then the release should be postponed and more work done until such time as that novel makes the editor so excited he or she can’t help telling everyone in the publishing house “You have GOT to read this novel!”

I’d love to see publishers spend less money advertising “sure thing” authors and take a fraction of that to really promote up and coming authors.

Copycat marketing. After The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood hit it big, suddenly we had The Yada Yada Prayer Group. And when Blue Like Jazz was a bestseller, along came Blue Like Play Dough. Usually authors don’t pick titles. This is almost always the publisher’s marketing team’s decision, and it’s shameless for a Christian businessperson to try to piggy-back on someone else’s success this way.

A concerted effort on behalf of book club fiction authors to get those books in the hands of book clubs.

Christian authors who write three or more novels in one year. It’s not possible to produce that many deeply thoughtful and extremely well written words in one year, yet every Christian novel should be deeply thoughtful and extremely well written, since the Bible says, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.”

That only 5% of the books get 90% of marketing, sales promotion, and shelf placement so that many titles with outstanding reviews sell under 10,000 just because no one sees them.

Placing fiction in a 70-90,000 word count box with an occasional stretch to 120,000 when the ABA routinely allows books to range from 50,000 to the million-word Tom Clancy, if that is what it takes to write a great book. There is currently no place in CBA for the complex full-length blockbuster novel.

From Author (Anonymous):

My big piece of advice would be for publishers to listen to Seth Godin, especially his comments on tribes.

To be continued . . .

If you could change five things (or less) in CBA publishing, what would they (it) be? (Unabridged and unedited.)

From Author Michael Snyder:

I can only think of two…

The first, and most important thing I’d change is my sales numbers!

Second, I’d expand the menu. I recently paged through a CBD catalog and it felt very much like browsing the shelves of a CBA store, or even the “Christian Fiction” section of Barnes & Noble. Judging the books by their covers, titles, and back cover blurbs, it would appear that Christian fiction consumers are most interested in: a) historical novels, b) gender-specific titles (specifically, the female gender), c) thriller/suspense/mystery/lawyer books, d) novels that mix two or more of the aforementioned genres, and e) not much else. 

And this is not a complaint, just a sad reality. I’m glad those books are available. I just wish there was something there I wanted to read.

I fully understand the chicken/egg conundrum here. Do publishers offer distinctly similar titles because that’s what they prefer? (Maybe.) Or, do they simply publish the books their readership demands? (Probably.)

My “solution” to this dilemma would not be to publish less of what people want. That would be silly. Publishing is a business; thus, stewardship matters; thus, it makes total sense for supply to follow the demand. So I am in no way advocating that publishers rob Peter to pay Paul (or Peggy to pay Polly?). Nor am I greedily asking for someone else’s piece of pie. I suppose what I’m asking for is to simply make a slightly larger pie…or occasionally add a different pie to the menu…then perform the CBA industry equivalent of having ladies in hairnets pass out samples like they do at SAM’s and Costco.

How else will I discover my secret cravings for cinnamon-crusted peanut-butter-and-jelly shrimp toes unless I am accosted at the end of an aisle by a dour-faced lady with frilly toothpicks? 

Those human sample-dispensers are there to raise awareness, to market, to create a little demand—not just to give away inventory. We all know you can’t get past the lady with the Magic Marker until you pay for those gourmet fish sticks or pomegranate-flavored goat’s milk.

However, people cannot buy what’s not there. And they won’t buy what they don’t know exists.

I am not asking publishers to cede profits in the pursuit of literary excellence (or even variety). My idea has more to do with making solid investments.

And if I’m right, if there is some merit to creating a little demand for a few “offbeat” titles (and I’m only asking for the same “type” of books offered in general market fiction sections), and it actually works…then everybody’s pie gets bigger. Publishers win by making more money, and quite possibly creating a whole new stream of income. And readers win by having a wider variety of titles to choose from.

I fully understand calculated risks, and the fact that both of my suggested “changes” basically amount to “spending someone else’s money.” Still, I can dream…

For what it’s worth, I believe this question was posed to me as a writer. But I may have inadvertently answered it as a reader. I routinely browse the shelves where CBA fiction resides. But sadly, I don’t spend many dollars there. And it’s not because I don’t want to. (In fact…upon completing this little essay, I drove to my local CBA bookseller and vowed to buy the first book that piqued my interest. This was a sincere endeavor. However, I ended up spending my cash at the B&N across the street. Although I think I’ll really enjoy the book, it was not a happy purchase.)

To be continued . . .

If you could change five things (or less) in CBA publishing, what would they (it) be?

For some professionals this question sparked an in depth response. Today’s post belongs to one of those. (Unabridged and unedited.)

From Author, Editor, Publisher Jeff Gerke, Marcher Lord Press:

Actually, I wouldn't have them change at all, Nicole. I think they're satisfactorily serving the white, Evangelical soccer mom and grandmother market in North America. They know what that demographic wants, and they give it to them. Since that is the largest book-buying (especially fiction-buying) slice of Evangelicalism in North America, it's wise for them to keep going after that market. However, that road may swiftly be approaching a dead end.

What they haven't been as good at is developing new markets or, as we're seeing now, changing with the times. They're being forced to think about that sort of thing now, which I think is healthy.

I personally think the era of "big-box Christianity" is over in North America. Denominations, big ministries, and large Evangelical publishers are all feeling the pinch right now. It's not primarily because we're in a recession, I don't think. I think it's because we're moving away from centralized control over what is done and toward a more individualistic, personally customizable approach.

The trend over the last several centuries has been away from an authoritarian power bloc off somewhere making rules or determining what can or cannot be produced and toward power in the hands of the individual. Think the Reformation, the rise of Democracy, the invention of the movable type printing press, and (more recently) the Internet and revolutions in music, information, and now books.

No longer do music labels decide what will be on an album or CD and everybody just takes it or leaves it. Now you can download just the individual songs you want. No longer do monastery or university libraries control access to knowledge. Now you just Google it. No longer does Hollywood control what movies are produced. Now anyone with a video camera can post his movie on YouTube. No longer do "the big six" publishers decide what can and can't be published. Now anyone with a manuscript can get it in the hands of millions of people through e-readers and print-on-demand technology.

Soon we may see the demise of TV networks. They're one of the last media blocs that controls what we see and when we see it. That's going against the current of history, and it won't last. We'll soon be able to watch what we want, when we want to watch it. The traditional church building and ministry structure is another system that may move from corporate to more personalized and smaller groups.

Your question was what CBA should do to change. Because I own a small, nimble, indie press that can take advantage of these new trends, I have a different perspective. I don't actually see what big CBA houses can do to survive. Not in a time when we don't need big groups of people to produce a book–when 1 person can produce a professional-quality print book, when you don't even need print books anymore.

Authors are seeing it. If they can have a professional-quality book and not have to give away 90% of the profits to a publisher, they're suddenly going, "Wait, tell me again why I need a publisher." Readers are seeing it: they're finding they can get whatever obscure kind of book they like and don't have to just sit around hoping a publisher will see a satisfactory profit margin and produce that book.

If a CBA house were able to think radically and not have to act out of concern for the many good Christian families they'd suddenly render unemployed, I do think there is something they could do. I think they could break themselves down to 10 people maximum, split out in 2-6 imprints or product lines. They could be like several Marcher Lord Presses linked together and sharing resources and risk. They could also stop fighting the trend toward the individualization of publishing and embrace it instead, offering their expert editorial, design, and marketing services to people willing to pay for it.

It's not a question of what 1-2 little things I'd like to see a CBA house change. It's time to evolve or perish. Publishers don't want to fire all their people and change so radically, I know. On the other hand, if things go as I think they might, they'll end up firing all their people anyway. Better to see the handwriting on the wall–the seven sickly cows–the danger approaching…and make changes now so they can smile at the future (Proverbs 31:25b).

To be continued . . .