Digital shift brings a new opportunity for CBA retailers as big-box stores cut back

When describing the state of Christian fiction today in a single word, “flux” springs to mind. Dictionary.com defines it as “continuous change, passage or movement.” Christian fiction print sales have taken a beating at brick-and-mortar stores in the past few years, declining in dollars and shelf space in big-box retailers and Christian stores alike, while e-book sales have gained ground due to “flash” sale pricing and the increase in popularity of e-readers. That has turned the fiction category into a roller-coaster ride not only for retailers, but also for publishing houses. 

Guideposts announced in July the end of its fiction retail sales; Moody Publishers’ young fiction imprint, River North, said it will cut back on new titles this year; and B&H Publishing Group “reset” its fiction line in May, announcing it will only publish new fiction that ties in with ministries, external film partners and the like. It was only six years ago that B&H announced it would be investing heavily in fiction, hiring well-known editor Karen Ball and launching the website www.pureenjoyment.com the following year.

On the up side, this fall Zondervan is launching new Young Adult (YA) imprint Blink, which will publish mainly fiction for teens (with select nonfiction and autobiographies); the FrontLine imprint of Charisma House Book Group hit the fiction big-time with runaway best-seller The Harbinger by Jonathan Cahn; and Howard Books announced it is beefing up its fiction offerings this year after signing a 10-book deal with Christian fiction’s reigning romance queen, Karen Kingsbury, whose hardcover novel The Chance debuted in the No. 1 spot on the New York Times best-seller list in March. 

Even with all the ups and downs, Christian publishers report feeling hopeful about fiction overall—hopeful that sales at Christian retail can rebound, that the effects of digital downloads are becoming more predictable and that Christian retailers should be able to poise their stores once again to be the go-to destination for Christian novels rather than big-box competitors.

TURNING THE TIDE

Christian Retailing spoke to representatives from the editorial, marketing and publicity teams of several Christian publishers, including HarperCollins Christian Publishing (parent company of Thomas Nelson and Zondervan), WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group, Howard Books and Bethany House (Baker Publishing Group) about the state of Christian fiction today, what trends they foresee and how Christian retailers can rebuild their sales in this category. 

“I think it is probably not an overstatement to say that the Christian fiction category has been the most aggressively challenged category in CBA because of the shift to online publishing,” said Daisy Hutton, vice president and publisher at HarperCollins Christian Publishing’s fiction division. “Our category has lost more shelf space, and we feel like we have been really fighting for the hearts and minds in this category.”

“I think we can say that it is stabilizing,” said Noelle Buss, fiction publicist for Bethany House. “While the market has been very volatile over the last few years, we are now seeing a leveling off and some rebounding.”

“I think we are coming into a time of right-sizing, as opposed to downsizing,” said Shannon Marchese, senior editor of fiction for WaterBrook Multnomah. “In part, it’s because of the explosive growth of Christian fiction 10 to 15 years ago, followed by declines in the last seven years. I think we’re coming into a right-sizing era now. We’re not throwing as much against the wall to see what will stick.”

Christian fiction sales quadrupled from $1 billion annually to $4 billion from 1980 to 2000, jump-started in the late-1990s by the best-selling “Left Behind” series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, according to a study presented at the 2009 International Christian Retail Show. 

When the post-rapture series took off, Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble, Target and Sam’s Club hopped on the bandwagon and began aggressively stocking Christian fiction, and Christian retailers found themselves struggling to keep up with the discounted pricing. Then online powerhouses Amazon and Christian Book Distributors began to help themselves to large pieces of the Christian fiction sales pie; and in the last few years, e-readers and digital downloads carved out yet another big chunk of sales dollars. As orders shifted to online retailers and digital downloads, fiction sales at general market and Christian brick-and-mortar stores suffered.

The 2013 BookStats report from the Association of American Publishers and the Book Industry Study Group shows that e-books have grown 45% since 2011 and now constitute 20% of the trade market. The largest e-book sales category? Adult fiction. Strangely, Christian market publishers feel that may actually bring a ray of hope to Christian retailers. Why? Because since readers are turning to their tablets for the latest titles, big-box stores are now pulling back, stocking fewer print titles for shorter amounts of time. CBA publishers say this gives Christian stores a renewed chance to pick up sales, if they are willing to give the category another look.

“With a smaller footprint in the big-box stores, there is definitely the opportunity for Christian retailers to offer more diversity,” Marchese said. “Consumers will look to them to be the place to go to find that depth and diversity.”

The ongoing challenge for publishers is to connect with consumers in many places and spaces in order to help them find Christian fiction amidst the wealth of fiction, nonfiction, films, television shows, newspapers, magazines, games, websites that constitute consumers’ daily media menu. 

“There has been such a resurgence of epic fantasy in the larger culture, and I have wondered why that hasn’t spilled over to stronger book sales in the category,” Hutton said. “Part of the answer, I think, is that in that category, we’re not just competing with other Christian books or even general market books, but also every TV show, every film and every video game in this space. Consumers just have so many choices now for how they spend their time being entertained, and we are competing directly for their attention with those other forms of media.”  

CBA publishers are trying to drive consumers to buy Christian fiction in any format they can manufacture, be it virtual or physical—so that they can keep publishing, period. Readers no longer discover books they like or uncover new authors they might want to follow at local bookstores. Instead, fiction audiences are developing their reading tastes online through “word of mouth” on Facebook, blogs, author websites and book-dedicated websites. 

“Ask people how they are finding new authors, and they say ‘online’ or they got a recommendation from someone who found the author online,“ said Steve Oates, vice president of marketing, Bethany House. “There is no longer one gathering place for us to find our audience, so we have to go to 15 or 20 of them and think about how to reach readers in all of these spaces.”

Thousands of bloggers review Christian books, “blog tours” abound to get the word out about new authors and titles, and many a website is dedicated exclusively to Christian fiction. Zondervan created BookSneeze.com, a site where bloggers can request free books in exchange for reviews on their blogs and on retail sites like Amazon. For consumers, LifeWay hosts the Christian fiction blog “A Novel Bookshelf,” and WaterBrook Multnomah launched NovelCrossing.com last year, a site dedicated to becoming the “intersection of fiction and faith,” as its tag line reads. The site offers reviews of books from many publishers, author interviews, an interactive community and graphic resources to “pin” on places like Pinterest, Facebook and blogs. 

“NovelCrossing.com is less than a year old, so the proof is not in the pudding yet,” Marchese said. “But we are hopeful.”

INVESTING IN AUTHORS

Christian fiction does seem to be succeeding in content. The quality of stories in the Christian market has increased significantly in the last decade, and publishers are branching out into many genres, as well as putting new spins on the tried-and-true.

“What’s interesting to me is the new books that fit into an older genre but have something that makes them a little bit unique,” said Beth Adams, senior editor for Howard Books. “We have the Amish title Promise to Return [by Elizabeth Byler Younts, October] about a young Amish man who gets drafted in World War II. Because the Amish are pacifists, he is sent to a public service camp, where he realizes that he wants to enlist and go fight. This book fits squarely into the Amish category, yet it has a unique quality that makes it stand out.”

“Amish is incredibly strong for us, but the requirement more and more is for something that makes those books distinctive,” agreed Hutton. “We are past the point where we can turn out vanilla titles. We also want to find books that transcend genre, and those are often the hardest to publish because they don’t fit into any one slot.”

Hutton points to the upcoming contemporary debut novel Dear Mr. Knightley by Katherine Reay (Thomas Nelson, November) as a good example.

“It is one of the more literary books that we would ever publish, yet it has strong commercial sensibility and lots of hooks,” she said.

“Romantic suspense is really growing for us,” Oates said of Bethany House, which publishes popular suspense author Dee Henderson. “And historical fiction has helped us. Some of the top authors are rebounding, and we have been curiously watching the sort of nonfiction-fiction titles like The Harbinger and The Shack. But those kinds of books are either huge or don’t do much.”

“We are focusing less on trends and more on voices,” Marchese said of WaterBrook Multnomah. “We are focusing on a group of 12 to 15 authors with really strong voices. We found a great new voice, Tim Lewis, whose first book is coming out this fall. His book Forever Friday is in the same vein as Nicholas Sparks.”

Publishers agree they are all continually looking for the next big thing—big idea, big audience, big voice. They look for new authors at writers’ conferences, through agent submissions and via blogs and self-published books in digital stores. As competition becomes stiffer, first- and second-time authors usually must have a built-in audience for a publisher to sign them or keep them on their list.

“If a new author’s first book is not a hit, we are not seeing as many get a second and third chance,” Marchese said. “If an author’s first series didn’t launch like we wanted it to, but it got great reader feedback and had just what we want to hear spiritually, we want to keep investing in that author. We need to. But that part feels harder.”

“It may be harder to invest in those authors, but it is definitely something you have to do,” Buss agreed.