B&H’s Spanish division honored with Book of the Year

B&H Español, B&H Publishing Group’s Spanish division, won two major categories during the 2012 Spanish Evangelical Products Association (SEPA) Awards. The banquet event concluded the Spanish-language Christian trade show Expolit, held May 2-5 at the Doubletree Hotel & Miami Airport Convention Center in Miami.

B&H Español was honored with the Harold Kregel Award for Book of the Year 2012 for La Resolución Para Hombres (The Resolution for Men) by Stephen and Alex Kendrick with Randy Alcorn. B&H‘s Spanish division was also named the Publisher of the Year. 

“This is the first time we’ve received Publisher of the Year from SEPA, and we thank God for all these honors,” said B&H Publishing President Selma Wilson. “We love providing biblical resources for our Spanish-speaking brothers and sisters.” 

A Whitaker House title, La Gloria de Dios (Glory of God) by Guillermo Maldonado won the award for the Best Original Book in Spanish 2012. The Distributor of the Year Award went to Distribuidora Ariel de México. 

Two publishers received two design awards. Casa Creación won the Best Bible Cover and Interior Design for Biblia Para la Guerra Espiritual (Spiritual Warfare Bible), and Unilit was honored with the Best Book Cover for Manual Para el Cuidado del Cáncer de Mama (The Manual for Breast Cancer Care) by Sally M. Knox.

Tyndale House Publishers’ Spanish division, Tyndale Español, won the Best Website Award, and Spanish publishing house Editorial CLIE (Committee on Literature for Evangelical Churches) was honored with the Best Presence in Social Networks Award. 

Gallery of Honor books were also presented with sales awards at Gold, Platinum and Diamond levels.

The Diamond award, given to a book or Bible that has sold more than 1 million copies, went to Biblia Súper Económica (Economic Super Bible, American Bible Society).

The Platinum award celebrates a book or Bible that has sold more than 500,000 copies and was awarded to El poder de los esposa que ora (The Power of a Praying Wife) by Stormie Omartian (Unilit).

The Gold award is given to a book or Bible that has sold more than 250,000 copies. Five Gold awards were presented to Su mejor vida ahora (Your Best Life Now) by Joel Osteen (Casa Creación); El desafio del amor (The Love Dare) by Alex and Stephen Kendrick (B&H Español); El poder de los padres que oran (The Power of a Praying Parent) by Stormie Omartian (Unilit); Esta Boca Mía (Me and My Big Mouth) by Joyce Meyer (Unilit); and Biblia NTV Edición Cosecha (Harvest Edition: New Living Translation, Tyndale Español).

During the event, David Peacock, president of Colombia-based Editorial Buena Semilla, was honored as one of the pioneers in the printing and distribution of Spanish Christian books.

Show is seen as ‘an important venue’ for licensing translation rights

Nearly 20 U.S. Christian publishers took part in the 2013 London Book Fair this spring, which generated brisk business. 

The publishers—including Tyndale House Publishers, Baker Publishing Group and Crossway—were part of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association’s (ECPA) exhibit, also known as the Christian Collective. Held April 8-10 at Earls Court in London, the fair hosted 1,700 exhibitors from 130 countries with a total attendance of 24,802, organizers said. 

Cindy Riggins, president of Riggins International Rights Services, represented several publishers, including Abingdon Press, AMG Publishers/Living Ink, B&H Publishing Group and Worthy Publishing. 

“Generally, traffic was active in most of the ECPA collective booths, mostly from pre-scheduled appointments,” she told Christian Retailing. “Since London is not as active as ICRS [International Christian Retail Show] or Frankfurt [Book Fair], it provides time for longer appointments with key publishing partners.”

The Christian Collective offered its first special event at the fair this year. Riggins International held a fiction tea for inspirational fiction rights buyers at a London hotel. 

“Two of our clients—European authors Frederick Hurr (B&H Publishing) and Kaare Skuland (Hermon Forlag)—spoke to a group of 20,” Riggins said. “We also presented key new fiction releases. While many European publishers are reducing the number of titles produced due to the continued economic woes, fiction is still very important to their acquisitions program.

“The U.K. publishers we met with seemed a bit more optimistic about their market after several years of decreased sales and mergers,” she added.

Baker Publishing Group Director of Rights and Contracts Marilyn Gordon said one of the fair’s highlight was the Digital Rights Conference, held April 7.

“The London Book Fair is an important venue for ECPA publishers to publicize their upcoming titles, and to license subsidiary and translation rights,” she said. “We met with publishers from around the world, including Asia, Europe, South America, Africa and even the U.S.”

This year’s Frankfurt Book Fair is set for Oct. 8-12, and the next London Book Fair is slated for April 8-10, 2014.

Seeing ‘an unprecedented opportunity,’ Christian micropublishers are taking advantage of the digital wave

Former news reporter Fiona Veitch Smith didn’t plan to start a publishing company.

“It just happened,” she said.

Now Smith has a print series of picture books for children and a range of e-novels for adults. She’s part of the growing phenomenon of “micro-publishers” in the United Kingdom.

Smith realized recession’s impact on the publishing industry and the rise of e-books offered “an unprecedented opportunity” for authors to write their own destinies, so she set up Newcastle-based Crafty Publishing (www.craftypublishing.com) in 2011 with her computer-whiz husband, Rod.

Her colorful kids’ books on young King David are now in Christian bookstores across Britain. 

The e-book process of writing and uploading has its drawbacks. 

“Everyone’s doing it––and most are doing it badly,” she said. “It’s hard for people to take you seriously because there’s so much rubbish floating around.” 

Yet the digital realm does offer opportunities for low-cost marketing.

Another husband-and-wife team, Mark and Mary Fleeson, have created a subculture of “coffee-table monasticism” with graphic-rich books on prayer from their Northumbria-based art and publishing house Lindisfarne Scriptorium (www.lindisfarne-scriptorium.co.uk).

“When Apple produced its free software for producing iBooks, that allowed us to produce a version of our photographic prayer book,” said Mark Fleeson.

To crack the Kindle code, he downloaded a sample e-book and split it into its components.

“Once I understood the structure, I started building a Kindle version of our book Woven Words,” he explained.

The title became their most popular e-book.

Challenges include the abundance of digital formats and customers expecting e-books to be free or a “substantially lower” price than print. The Fleesons still put out print products, too, such as The One Day Creative Retreat Book, selling more than 600 copies since its April launch. 

London-based Manoj Raithatha also never intended to become a publisher. But he believed God drew him into the industry while co-writing a book called Building the Kingdom Through Business. He set up Instant Apostle (www.instantapostle.com), publishing “new voices” for web and print.

“There are so many voices that need hearing—and don’t get heard,” Raithatha said.

So Raithatha takes that risk with such titles as Potholes and Belly-flops by former glamour model Susie Flashman Jarvis and I’m A Christian, So What Do I Believe? by Anglican priest Ken Gardiner.

Raithatha has only positive things to say about his experience with electronic publishing. Focusing on new writers is paying off––a number of their titles are on their way to the 1,000th-sale mark, which is reasonable progress in the U.K. market.

With e-publishing still in its infancy, some wonder if the bubble will burst. Only time will tell. But creative Christians are among the pioneers on the digital frontier. As Smith said, “The rules have yet to be written.”

Liz Curtis Higgs credits Christian retailers as helping to establish and disciple her as a young believer

When Liz Curtis Higgs came to know Christ in 1982, she quickly found herself alone in her faith walk—but Christian retailers became her biggest encouragers.

Higgs’ mentors moved away almost immediately after she was saved, and, although she knew a few people at the church she attended, she was virtually alone as she began her walk with God. Still, Christian retailers who kept her supplied with the best books on the topics she sought, including her first Bible, a Ryrie Study Bible, became her steady helpers.

“The first time I walked into a Christian bookstore I felt like I was in a parallel universe. I said, ‘Wow! This is a whole store about Jesus,’ ” said Higgs with her signature hearty laugh. “They became my go-to source. They filled my arms with books and I was so grateful.”

Today Higgs is author of 30 books with more than 4.5 million in print, from her perennial best-selling “Bad Girls of the Bible” series to children’s books to award-winning historical fiction. Within months of her salvation, she began teaching, and not long after that sensed God was calling her to write. Thomas Nelson published her first book, “One Size Fits All” and Other Fables in 1993, and WaterBrook Press released one of her most popular titles, Bad Girls of the Bible, in 1999.

WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group is reissuing Bad Girls of the Bible this month, and has retooled the book’s DVD curriculum. 

To mark the release of the refreshed book and curriculum, Higgs is launching her Bad Girls thank-you tour July 22 in Boston. She’ll be in Oklahoma City, Okla., Nashville and Grand Rapids, Mich., the following week visiting Christian retail stores and the headquarters of Mardel Christian & Education, LifeWay Christian Stores, Family Christian Stores and Christian Book Distributors. She’ll lead devotions or Bible studies at the stores and headquarters.

“Christian retail has been so good to me,” Higgs said. “They keep my books on the shelves from those in the early 2000s right up to the most recent. When I moved into historical fiction, Christian retailers just went for it. They have my back and have been there year after year.”

Rachel McRae, book buyer for adult trade books for LifeWay Christian Stores, said: “Liz is one of our top authors in fiction and nonfiction for the whole chain.”

McRae is quick to call Higgs an evergreen seller and a top-selling author in women’s and fiction categories. 

“Her fiction fans continue to grow with each new release. We love to promote Liz and keep her in front of customers,” she added.

Stephen W. Cobb, president and publisher at WaterBrook Multnomah, remembers Higgs as one of the earliest contracted authors with Bad Girls of the Bible when WaterBrook Press started. 

“The message of that book is outstanding and timeless, and we’ve made every effort to refresh the packaging,” Cobb said. “It’s been a spectacular performer, and the other books in the series have done well, too.”

Others in the series include Really Bad Girls of the Bible, Slightly Bad Girls of the Bible and Unveiling Mary Magdalene.

WaterBrook will release her newest book, The Women of Christmas: Experience the Season Afresh with Elizabeth, Mary, and Anna, in September. Higgs created the original content for an online Bible study on her blog, which had about 5,000 signed up for the study.

“Her online Bible study was so popular that we all decided it needed to be a book,” said Beverly Rykerd, publicity manager for WaterBrook Multnomah. “Liz is smart, easy to work with, very talented, and boy, can she pull the meat out of a Bible verse!”

Cobb calls Higgs unique in a publishing sense because she writes outstanding nonfiction, but is also a best-selling novelist with her historical series set in Scotland and her contemporary fiction. She has been nominated for numerous Christy Awards and has won several. Her historical fiction includes Thorn in My Heart, first in a four-book series; Here Burns My Candle, first in a two-book series; and the Victorian Christmas novella A Wreath of Snow, a 2013 Christy Award finalist. 

Her four “Parable” books for children are Gold Medallion Book Award winners. Awards aside, though, Higgs represents the core of the Christian publishing industry, “being engaged in personal relationship with God and in disciplined study of His Word,” Cobb said.

“She is a Bible teacher who is not bound by format or genre,” he added. “Her novels lend themselves to Bible study, and her nonfiction is deeply rooted in Scripture and certainly fit for study.”

Add to that her full speaking and travel schedule and her personal touch. 

“Most every time she travels she makes time to visit Christian bookstores to meet their frontliners, visit with customers in the store and sign books,” Cobb said. “She makes a great effort to maintain the touch.”

Higgs happily confesses that one of her favorite things to do is what she calls “a drive-by signing.” 

“I just stop in at a Christian bookstore and say ‘hi’ and ask to sign books,” she said. “I’ve often thought that if I could convince a store to let me be a worker, I would learn so much.”

She commends Christian retailers for their wisdom in getting to know authors and see their hearts, to ask questions, and for their personal service and wisdom in stocking good books.

“I’ve always understood Christian retail to be a ministry, and ministry happens because people hand-sell those books,” said Higgs. “I want Christian retailers to see who I really am and that this is a woman they can stand behind. They have the right and responsibility to examine those who write.”

Higgs is reaching a new audience, thanks to her “Righteous Ruth Rap,” a live recording from her appearance in Little Rock, Ark., that is taking YouTube by storm. Based on her book The Girl’s Still Got It: Take A Walk with Ruth and the God Who Rocked Her World (WaterBrook, 2012), Higgs offered the rap as a summary to those who hadn’t heard her previous teaching on Ruth. She’s also working on a music video to go with the new edition of Bad Girls of the Bible.

The key, according to Higgs, is helping readers however she can, whether through rap, discussion questions, video teaching, study guides, meeting readers in stores or at speaking events, or encouraging the Christian retailers who stock her books.

“I grieve every time I hear that a Christian retailer has to close its doors. It hurts,” she said. “They offer personal service and knowledge of the books on the shelves—something no online retailer can. The bottom line for me is that it’s always about ministry rather than promotion. I’ll do anything to let our retailers know they make a difference.”

Plan to join us at the Town Center Stage to find out if the products you voted for were chosen as best of the year

The Christian products industry is putting on its shine this month for CBA’s International Christian Retail Show (ICRS). Christian Retailing will also be a part of the show—with the Charisma Media booth (#2138) and with our Christian Retailing’s Best awards.

Jonathan Cahn, best-selling author of The Harbinger (Charisma House), has graciously accepted our invitation to present the 2013 awards Tuesday, June 25, 10-11 a.m. 

And for the first time, we have moved our awards event to the Town Center Stage to involve more retailers and other show visitors. Even if you can’t stay the full hour, we invite you to take a break and stop by to celebrate with the authors, artists and companies who won this year—many whom you may have voted for by online ballot.

During ICRS, the Christian Retailing team also will be covering many events and visiting with retailers and exhibitors. We always look forward to finding out what’s happening in your world and to hear feedback on the job we’re doing. Hope to see you there!

U.S. government’s retreat called ‘an encouraging step,’ but publisher says ‘the court case isn’t over’

Tyndale House Publishers has been handed a gift by the Obama administration in its abortion-pill mandate case. On May 3, at the U.S. government’s request, a federal court dismissed the Obama administration’s appeal of a preliminary injunction in the case. 

The administration’s retreat marks the first total appellate victory on a preliminary injunction in such a case.

Based in Carol Stream, Ill., the world’s largest privately held Christian publisher filed a lawsuit against the administration in October because the publisher specifically objects to covering abortion pills. A month later, a federal court temporarily halted the abortion pill mandate as litigation in the case continued. The government filed an appeal in January.

“The government dismissed its appeal because it knows how ridiculous it sounds arguing that a Bible publisher isn’t religious enough to qualify as a religious employer,” said Matt Bowman, senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which represents Tyndale. “For the government to say that a Bible publisher isn’t religious is outrageous, and now the Obama administration has had to retreat in court.”

Tyndale House President and CEO Mark Taylor told Christian Retailing that “this was an encouraging step in the process, but the court case isn’t over.”

“We appreciate the legal support of ADF, but it’s discouraging that we have to spend so much time and energy in defending our right to operate our Christian business, according to the implications of our religious beliefs,” he said.

The administration argued that Tyndale House isn’t religious enough for an exemption from the mandate, a component of Obamacare that forces employers, regardless of their religious or moral convictions, to provide insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization and contraception under threat of heavy penalties. The publisher is subject to the mandate because Obama administration rules say for-profit corporations are categorically nonreligious.

Following the government’s request, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia dropped the administration’s appeal, which means the preliminary injunction issued by a district court in November will stand, while the case, Tyndale House Publishers v. Sebelius, moves forward.

The Obama administration required most businesses to comply with the Health and Human Services mandate by August 2012. Some faith-based organizations, including hospitals and universities, have a so-called safe harbor until August, but Tyndale does not qualify for the extension.

ADF said 59 lawsuits are challenging the mandate, and courts have issued orders in 25 of the cases involving for-profit companies. Injunctions were granted to temporarily halt the mandate in all but six of those cases.

 In a separate case, Hobby Lobby Stores and sister retailer Mardel Christian and Education were schedule to have their health care case heard before a full court, instead of the usual three-judge panel, May 23 in Denver.

CBA supports the online sales tax law because it ‘levels the playing field’ 

CBA, the National Retail Federation (NRF) and Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) have praised the Senate passage of the Marketplace Fairness Act on May 6. The bill, S. 743, now moves to the House, where it is expected to face opposition.

Sponsored by Senators Mike Enzi (R-WY) Richard Durbin (D-IL), Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), the legislation—which would allow states to require and collect online sales tax—passed the Senate by a more than two to one margin.

“CBA has been advocating along with other retail groups to pass this legislation that helps our members compete fairly in the marketplace,” said Curtis Riskey, president of the Christian retail association.

Riskey said CBA supported the legislation for three reasons:

“This is not new taxation. This is specifically taxation already on the books, but not enforced. CBA is not for increases in taxes, just fairness in collection.

“This will help level the playing field for small business. Again, when an online competitor is not required to collect sales taxes, brick-and-mortar retailers who follow the law can face as much as a 10% disadvantage.

“Small online-only retailers will be spared. Any small online-only retailer will not have to report sales under $1 million in revenue. This legislation also would simplify the tax administration process so online retailers only have to work with one agency and not 50-plus.”

NRF issued the following statement from NRF Chairman of the Board Stephen I. Sadove of Saks and NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay on the bill’s Senate passage:

“We applaud Senators Enzi, Durbin, Alexander and Heitkamp and the entire U.S. Senate for standing with local retailers and America’s small business owners in a strong, bipartisan vote for final passage of the Marketplace Fairness Act, despite a highly funded misinformation campaign by the legislation’s opposition,” Shay said. “Today’s action in the Senate is a significant step for sales tax fairness and we look forward to a robust debate in the U.S. House of Representatives.”

The Retail Industry Leaders Association also issued a statement on the passage.

“The Senate’s overwhelmingly bipartisan passage of this legislation foreshadows the end of the special treatment of big online businesses at the expense of retailers on Main Street,” said Bill Hughes, senior vice president for government affairs. 

“After such a resounding vote in the Senate, we look forward to a constructive debate in the House to level the playing field for all retailers this year.”