Industry-wide digital platform planned to help brick-and-mortar retailers

Publishing and retail leaders are working on an industry-wide platform for delivering e-books to Christian stores, to help them compete in the growing digital market.

The effort began at the International Christian Retail Show (ICRS) in St. Louis, where the impact of digital publishing on retailers was a major focus of the June 27-30 event.

The initiative, which could provide a way for Christian retailers to make e-books available to their shoppers online or in-store, will likely center on collaborating with some existing service, rather than creating a new system.

ICRS attendees heard that while digital publishing is changing the way that people read and buy books, brick-and-mortar retailers can win a slice of the e-book pie if they work to build strong relationships with their customers.

Addressing the issue was "our number one priority," said CBA Executive Director Curtis Riskey. "We can't afford to just talk about these things. We need to move to strategy and action."

One option under consideration is the IndieCommerce white-label e-commerce platform serving general market independent bookstores, from Ingram—parent company of Spring Arbor, whose director of sales, Chris Smith, mentioned the possibility during ICRS' opening general-session panel: "Digital/Mortar: Store Value in a Digital Age."

"We've had preliminary discussions regarding e-book fulfillment solutions with the CBA," he told Christian Retailing.

"IndieCommerce currently serves hundreds of independent ABA-member booksellers, and it could serve as a roadmap for a possible CBA solution."

Evangelical Christian Publishers Association President and CEO Mark Kuyper, who took part in the digital session and other discussions at ICRS, said he was pleased with the interest in embracing e-books at retail.

"It's a step in a direction that is unfamiliar to them, so there is some fear involved in that and probably a sense of risk," he said, but "they are more than willing and ready to try to embrace it and do what they can."

The e-book thrust at ICRS came the same week of news of the end of another digital initiative that was launched at the show two years ago.

Zondervan announced the sale of its Symtio digital-distribution service to general market digital-marketing and distribution company LibreDigital. However, the buyer did not take on the in-store side of the business, which allowed Christian stores to sell cards enabling at-home downloads. Zondervan suspended that service in June.

Retailers at ICRS were urged to learn lessons from how the music industry handled the digital shift, by David Crace, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of EMI Christian Music Group.

Speaking in the digital panel discussion, he said that music companies had been slow to respond to the digital revolution, first being in denial about the changes and then trying to defend their old ways of doing things from innovation.

Thinking that they could stop people buying digital music, "we wasted a lot of time," Crace said, rather than working out how to embrace the changes in the best way. "Get on with the reality of thinking, ‘Let's think forward a couple of years of what it would look like for all of us to be successful across all these channels," he urged.

Fears that physical music sales would die out had been exaggerated, with CDs still accounting for 65% of all music purchases, he said. Six out of 10 consumers still only buy CDs.

In addition, Crace added, there were positive differences for digital books compared to digital music, which meant that its impact may be less. The big shift in music had come when digital content made it possible for shoppers to buy individual songs rather than having to purchase an entire album.

"I don't believe we will be in a place where people will be buying one chapter of a Max Lucado book, so there's a real benefit," he said.

There was also some encouragement from David Campbell, senior account manager for publishing information specialist R.R. Bowker. In a session presenting data from a survey of consumers' book-buying habits, he said that while purchases of e-books had quadrupled between 2008 and 2009, they still accounted for just 1.4% of all titles bought.

Marcie Chamness, owner of Trinity Christian Gifts & Books in Richmond, Ind., said that she felt that CBA was doing "a good job" in trying to help Christian retailers and publishers deal with the challenges of the digital book revolution.

"I am not sure what more they can really do," she said. "They are bringing the info to us. … We were involved in the Symtio project, but removed them after they told us to. ... It's a great deal for us."

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