Best-selling Christian novelist Lauraine Snelling is to be inducted into the Scandinavian-American Hall of Fame today, Sept. 26, joining the ranks of celebrities Jim Henson, Peggy Lee, Ann Bancroft, Knute Rockne and Chet Atkins.

The author of 74 novels with more than 2 million copies in print, Snelling is one of three new inductees who will be honored in the awards ceremony in Minot, N.D., along with Clint Hill, co-author of Mrs. Kennedy and Me, and actor Josh Duhame (All My Children and Las Vegas).

Drawing on her Norwegian roots and collection of immigrant stories, Snelling has written 17 novels published by Bethany House/Baker Publishing Group that are set on the banks of the Red River in fictional Blessing, N.D.

Other books include An Untamed Land and A Heart for Home (both Bethany House), and Reunion (FaithWords). Bethany House plans to release A Norwegian Maiden in September 2013. A Hand to Hold, a nonfiction title, was published by Revell/Baker Publishing Group.

"This award totally blew me away," Snelling said. "I wrote the Red River books in honor of our farmers, especially those immigrants of Scandinavian descent, who have worked so hard and creatively to claim their land and eventually feed the world. Our forefathers and mothers were incredibly strong and resilient, and now I get to write their stories and brag about them. I can't think of anything better."

Snelling's grandparents emigrated from Norway. She now lives in Tehachapi, Calif., with her husband, Wayne.

American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) has announced the winners of the Carol Awards for fiction at its conference gala in Dallas. Michael Hyatt, former chairman and CEO of Thomas Nelson, was keynote speaker at the Sept. 22 event that honored titles from a number of publishers, including Thomas Nelson and Zondervan—both now under the HarperCollins umbrella—and Baker Publishing Group.

Drawing from Eccl. 7:10, Hyatt encouraged attendees to lean into the changes in the publishing world.

"You resist the changes and hope we'll go back to the old days," Hyatt said to the ACFW conference audience and the publishing industry it represented, "but you won't go as far as if you lean into the change."

The Carol Award—formerly the ACFW's Book of the Year Award and renamed to honor Christian fiction pioneer editor Carol Johnson—honors the highest achievement for published authors of Christian fiction.

The 2012 winners were:

HarperCollins: Debut Novel: Fairer Than Morning by Rosslyn Elliott (Thomas Nelson); Long Historical: Fairer Than Morning by Rosslyn Elliott (Thomas Nelson); Romantic Suspense: Lonestar Angel by Colleen Coble (Thomas Nelson); Mystery: Falling to Pieces: A Shipshewana Amish Mystery by Vannetta Chapman (Zondervan); Young Adult: The Merchant's Daughter by Melanie Dickerson (Zondervan).

Baker Publishing Group: Long Contemporary: The Search by Suzanne Woods Fisher (Revell); Short Historical: The Deepest Waters by Dan Walsh (Revell); Long Historical Romance: To Win Her Heart by Karen Witemeyer (Bethany House).

Tyndale House Publishers: Long Contemporary Romance: My Foolish Heart by Susan May Warren.

Barbour Publishing: Novellas: An Accidental Christmas from A Biltmore Christmas by Diane T. Ashley/Aaron McCarver.

Harlequin: Short Contemporary: Lakeside Reunion by Lisa Jordan (Love Inspired); Short Contemporary Suspense: Nightwatch by Valerie Hansen (Love Inspired Suspense).

Marcher Lord Press: Speculative Fiction: Broken Sight by Steve Rzasa.

B&H Books: Suspense/Thriller: Fallen Angel by Major Jeff Struecker/Alton Gansky.

Penguin Group (USA): Women's Fiction: Dandelion Summer by Lisa Wingate (Penguin Praise/Berkley).

Other awards presented were: Lifetime Achievement Award: Allen Arnold; Editor of the Year: Julee Schwarzburg; Agent of the Year: Nicole Resciniti (The Seymour Agency); Mentor of the Year: Allison Pittman; and Member Service Award: Jeanne Marie Leach.

ACFW also announced the winners of its 2012 Genesis Contest for unpublished Christian writers, which had nearly 700 entries this year. Click here for the full list of winners.

Beverly Lewis' The Bridesmaid holds two high-ranking spots on the General and Fiction best-sellers from the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA), tracking sales for the week ending Sept. 15, according to Pubtrack Christian data.

The Top 20 General best-sellers were: 1. Jesus Calling, Sarah Young, hardcover (Thomas Nelson); 2. The Bridesmaid, "Home to Hickory Hollow" No. 2, Lewis (Bethany House/Baker Publishing Group); 3. Praying God's Word, Beth Moore (B&H Books/B&H Publishing Group); 4. Not a Fan, Kyle Idleman (Zondervan); 5. The Harbinger, Jonathan Cahn (FrontLine/Charisma House Book Group); 6. Jesus Calling, Young, large print deluxe (Thomas Nelson); 7. Jesus Calling, Young, deluxe (Thomas Nelson); 8. Unglued, Lysa TerKeurst (Zondervan); 9. Crazy Love, Francis Chan (David C Cook); 10. Grace, Max Lucado (Thomas Nelson); 11. KJV Standard Lesson Commentary, 2012-2013, softcover (Standard Publishing); 12. Heaven Is for Real, Todd Burpo (Thomas Nelson); 13. The 5 Love Languages, Gary Chapman (Northfield Publishing); 14. KJV Standard Lesson Commentary, 2012-2013, large print softcover (Standard Publishing); 15. Change Your Words, Change Your Life, Joyce Meyer (FaithWords); 16. Forgotten God, Francis Chan (David C Cook); 17. Battlefield of the Mind, Joyce Meyer (FaithWords); 18. Coming Home, Karen Kingsbury (Zondervan); 19. Made to Crave, Lysa TerKeurst (Zondervan); and Love & Respect, Emerson Eggerichs (Thomas Nelson).

The Top 10 Fiction best-sellers were: 1. The Bridesmaid; 2. The Harbinger; 3. Coming Home; 4. The Fiddler, "Home to Hickory Hollow" No. 1, Beverly Lewis (Bethany House/Baker Publishing Group); 5. Accused, "Pacific Coast Justice" No. 1, Janice Cantore (Tyndale); 6. Not in the Heart, Chris Fabry (Tyndale); 7. Promise Me This, Cathy Gohlke (Tyndale); 8. The Shadow of Your Smile, "Deep Haven" No. 5, Susan May Warren (Tyndale); 9. The Last Plea Bargain, Randy Singer (Tyndale); and 10. Redeeming Love, Francine Rivers (Multnomah Books).

The top five Bibles were: 1. NIV Adventure Bible, hardcover, (Zonderkidz); 2. The Story, NIV, deluxe, hardcover, New International Version (Zondervan); 3. The Story: Teen Edition, NIV, softcover (Zondervan); 4. NLT Life Recovery Bible, softcover, New Living Translation (Tyndale); and NIV Life Application Study Bible, hardcover (Zondervan).

Berean Christian Stores has expanded its film, music and digital business, while announcing the appointment of industry veteran Mark Beyer as senior entertainment buyer.

"We see entertainment as a growing category, representing a media that new customers are gravitating towards," said Bill Nielsen, chief operating officer of Berean Christian Stores. "We want to continue to provide an overall in-store shopping experience for our customers, as well as support several of our strategic supplier partners."

Prior to joining Berean, Beyer served in various roles at LifeWay Christian Stores and before that at Family Christian Stores.

"We are making several investments in the film, music and digital categories as we see them being a strategic opportunity for us to grow our ministry and business as we serve both today's and tomorrow's customer," Nielsen said. "Mark is a seasoned 23- year veteran with strong industry contacts and we have chosen to allow him to work out of Nashville to enable him to provide Berean with strong representation to the industry that is so firmly based in that market."

Beyer said he was "especially eager to collaborate with our vendors on some exciting ways we can help local ministries through our new Give Hope In Deed project, where each Berean store is actively involved in local Christian ministry to people who are hurting or in need."

Give Hope In Deed is an extension of the chain's Give Hope ministry, in which a Berean store partners with ministries in the community such as orphanages, schools for homeless children, crisis pregnancy centers and battered women's shelters. Throughout the year, customers donate to the ministries either monetarily or by donating clothing, food and supplies at the stores.

Starting Nov. 1, customers can purchase a product, and through Give Hope In Deed give the item to someone they know or donate it to one of the store's ministry partners.

Based in Cincinnati, the 18-outlet chain—which dates back to 1934—joined Covenant Group in June, increasing the country's second-largest independent Christian chain's membership by approximately 50%.

Click here for more information on Berean's Give Hope ministry. 

Retail operation capitalizes on gifts, decreases music and book inventory

When Lowe’s wanted to expand its footprint, the home improvement store asked The Master’s Parable Christian Store to consider moving. It took some time, but the Parable member store did change locations, landing in a former grocery store that is part of a 60,000-square-foot building. 

Several investors who believed in the ministry of the Clovis, N.M., store bought the large building, made some improvements and asked Master’s to be an anchor store. Along with owner Tammy Garner’s Parable franchise, part of the building is owned by Big Lots and part by another of Garner’s businesses, a coffee shop called Java Loft. 

“I’d always wanted a coffee shop with the bookstore,” she told Christian Retailing, “but I really didn’t want it to be within the bookstore because I know me and cutting corners, because I didn’t want someone who was a barista that had a dirty apron to feel like they had to go over to the Bible counter and sell.”

The nearly 10,000-square-foot location Master’s Parable occupies includes a 5,500-square-foot sales floor and a 1,200-square-foot conference room to use or rent out to the community.

Garner sells real estate full time now to help supplement the store’s ministry. This year she’s had to depend on her staff to run the store for the most part, but is still aware of what’s happening there.

Making it her store’s mission to provide “a haven of Christ’s love for our customers and our community,” Garner told the staff in a recent meeting: “When you open our double front doors in the morning, I want there to be a vacuum. What’s going to draw people in? Is it our customer service? Is it our marketing? Is it our products? And I think it’s got to be all of it.”

Garner also doesn’t want anyone in the community feeling left out in the cold.

“At a Christian store, you don’t want to isolate anyone,” she said, recognizing that in lowering price points so much through the years, they may have lost some more affluent customers. “We’ve actually isolated a part of our demographic that can and do buy the more expensive [items] and we didn’t have it for them to buy, and so it’s hard to be all things to all people.”

But in the area of jewelry, “that is something we’re going to try to do,” she said. “We want to have all price points for that. Now when we say all price points, we’re not going to be like the local diamond jewelry store.”

With moderately high-priced jewelry from Spirit and Truth, it has been “very, very hard to keep the spinner full,” gift buyer Teresa Teune said.

The gift department is going gangbusters, and the store also has seen success with apparel from NOTW, Know Him and Kerusso, and personalized items sold through its P. Graham Dunn laser center, which was up for the year 58%, doubling in sales from last year. 

 “A lot of the experiments I’ve done in the store by bringing in different lines and different price points have proven to be successful across the board, from high-end to low-end,” Teune said. 

The store was soon to bring in Halle Joy items, including higher-priced handbags, as well as Fair Trade items from Exotic World Gifts.

 Decreasing the store’s music section—something Garner acknowledges should have been done long ago—and limiting books mainly to best-sellers, the store is ramping up its gift and children’s inventory, including higher-end rocking horses and a line recycled from plastic milk jugs—from trucks to teapots. The store was looking for more “wood toys and more imagination things instead of electronics,” Teune said.

The store also a number of events, including an annual pastors’ breakfast and free VeggieTales screenings. 

Its annual Master’s Ambassadors dinner for the store’s top 50 customers for the year, is a “very special dinner with lots of perks,” Garner said. “If they’re our top customers, then they’re out telling other people about us. The dinner is not only to honor them, but to make sure that each one of them is aware of what we do and what we carry.”

A special luncheon to come will cater to the top 100 female customers so the store can introduce them to some new lines it will carry.

Garner knows that in reinventing the store, they’ve got to get the word out about what’s different. 

“It’s got to be about the experience that people have when they come into our store,” she said. “Everything, from the cleanliness of the store to the customer service to the products you sell, it’s all got to create that experience.”

Focus on ‘relationship building’ highlights ‘new normal’

Attendance was up for the International Christian Retail Show (ICRS) for the second year in a row, amid upbeat reviews from retailers, suppliers and distributors.

Primarily representing buyers, professional attendance at the show in the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla., held July 15-18, was 1,756, 0.5% over last year when the event was in Atlanta. Total attendance was up 1.5% to 4,990, while international attendance was down 14.6% to 368 attendees from 59 countries.  

The number of exhibitors grew by 0.3%, including 60 new vendors, and total booth space was down slightly by 0.5%. The exhibit floor had virtually same footprint in square footage and approximately the same size as last year, but in a different configuration—square not horizontal, CBA said.  

Given the challenging economy and other factors impacting retailing, “I believe the retailers who are here have a renewed passion,” CBA Executive Director Curtis Riskey told Christian Retailing near the show’s end. “The idea of fair trade in Christian retailing seems to align with [the retailers’ mission] and create a sweet spot. I would have to say that the show was a success. … I feel very happy and fortunate that was attendance up.”

George Thomsen, chairman of the CBA board and general manager of Harvest Bookstore in Riverside, Calif., said the show had steady traffic. 

“I had vendors I tried to see and I wasn’t able to see them because they were booked with appointments,” he said. “Overall, the show was positive and upbeat.”

Russ Schwartz, vice president of independent retail sales for Thomas Nelson, said the company had more than 150 meetings in its conference area on the exhibit floor with people across all Christian retail sales channels, plus impromptu meetings in the hall. 

“We met with our valuable partners to find new ways to grow our business together and continue to do business,” Schwartz said.

Verne Kenney, Zondervan’s executive vice president of sales, said ICRS was “a great opportunity for us to meet our key accounts, marketing groups and international customers.”

“We were very pleased to see CBA trying new things to bring people in to the show,” he said. “The ministry center and the Catholic connection were great ideas.”

Tyndale House Publishers President Mark Taylor commemorated the company’s 50th anniversary during the event’s CBA Members Luncheon. Each attendee of the Luncheon received a commemorative book, The Tyndale House 50th Anniversary Reader, which features excerpts from 50 products released in the history of the company.    

Tyndale Director of Sales Operations Sharon Heggeland said the company’s  staffing and booth size at ICRS has remained consistent for the past few years.  

“Domestic orders were about the same as last year,” she said. “Our international area continues to grow and had more appointments that ever. … Tyndale’s focus on ICRS has shifted from being an order-taking show to one where we focus on relationship building. Our production, international and national sales account staff continue to have key meetings at this show, so it remains an important one for us.” 

David Lewis, vice president of sales and marketing for Baker Publishing Group, said the show “had a very positive vibe to it.” “Most of the other suppliers and most of the accounts we talked to had a very positive outlook for the fall season, the industry in general and the show,” he said. “The supplier booths seem to be getting to the right size for the event, expectations seem to be more in line with the reality of the market challenges and most people are energized to keep working hard to meet the needs of their customers.”

Bob Bever, vice president of sales for Gospel Light, said Regal Books’ parent company reduced its staffing from 2011 due to a lower pre-registration of independent stores, and meetings and appointments were consolidated.

 “The retailers seem to be more encouraged and sensed that things may be settling in for them,” he said. “As vendors, we recognize that the changes in the market have brought a new normal to the way we all will do business. Traffic in the international booth was up.”

Marilyn Largent, David C. Cook’s senior director of trade sales, said her company didn’t exhibit last year.

“We returned this year for the international contacts and the personal meetings with key accounts,” she said. “Our international sales rep had appointments literally nonstop for the full three days.”

John Whitaker, vice president of Anchor Distributors, said his company’s booth, shared with sister company Whitaker House, had substantial traffic. 

“It was a good show, and better than last year,” he said.

Bill White, director of sales for apparel company NOTW, said the show was “the best ICRS we’ve attended in seven years,” adding that “the retailers here are the survivors, the remnant. They’re the ones figuring out ways to make it work.”

Lighthouse Christian Products Vice President of Sales Ed Nizynski thought that ICRS was “the best in years—better than last year,” he said. “It seemed the orders were bigger. International business was again strong.” 

Joshua Williams—manager of The Salt Shaker in Enumclaw, Wash.—said he “did a lot more buying this year.”

Dennis Lovvorn, co-owner of New Covenant Christian Bookstore in Shelbyville, Tenn., said ICRS “seemed quiet.” 

“CBA said it’s the same number of vendors as last year, but their booths are smaller,” he added.

Zondervan and Nelson now owned by the same parent company with each to maintain own editorial focus

HarperCollins Publishers has finalized the acquisition of Thomas Nelson. The takeover was announced last October when HarperCollins—a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. that is also the parent company of Zondervan—had agreed to acquire the Nashville-based publisher “for an undisclosed sum.”

Thomas Nelson will continue to operate as an independent company with its unique editorial focus on inspirational and Christian content. Details, such as how Nelson will benefit from HarperCollins global print and digital platform, were said to be forthcoming.

Mark Schoenwald, president and CEO of Thomas Nelson, said earlier that the transaction represented “an attractive strategic fit for our company,” adding that Nelson intended to “capitalize on the many opportunities” presented by association with HarperCollins.

Between Nelson and Zondervan, now siblings, they account for almost half of all book sales in the Christian market and, as publishers of the King James and New International Versions, the majority of Bible sales.

With the closing announced July 11, “HarperCollins is focused on evaluating all activities in North America and how it can best work to serve its authors and customers,” said Casey Harrell, director of corporate communications at Thomas Nelson. “HarperCollins has stated that they intend to continue to publish under both the Thomas Nelson and Zondervan brands each with its own unique editorial focus. The two companies have different, though complementary missions, and they will continue to keep those missions intact.”