Nominating the top books, Bibles, gifts, music and more

Christian retailers will soon be asked to help name the best new Christian products of the year.

They will be invited to help select the 2011 Christian Retailing Retailers Choice Awards, widely acknowledged for recognizing some of the most significant new life-changing products in the Christian retail industry.

I want to commend David Almack on his insightful Industry Forum article in the December issue of Christian Retailing. He is on the mark about the need for retailers to be readers. It is only through reading that retailers will develop what Terry Glaspey calls “a passion for books.”  Without this passion, they will not be successful booksellers. The owner or manager must have this passion and then infect their frontliners and customers with it.

     When someone is dealing with difficult circumstance, it is in books where they will find the help and answers they are looking for. I fear too many retailers have lost their way and almost abdicated their role of selling books. In some cases we have created a void that others have stepped in to fill.

George Thomsen
Chairman of the board
CBA

“A church bookstore ... is at the center of a legal battle being viewed as a major test case for religious freedom,” says the opening line of the lead story in the December 2010 issue. Really? 

Isn’t this really a question of when is a store a store, and should a business such as a store not pay the same taxes as any other business? Just because this store is located on church property does not make it any less a store, and therefore a business. Perhaps those involved should just “pay unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.” Making this an issue of religious freedom, seems to me, is overstating the case, and even bringing disrepute to the name of Jesus.

Femmie VanderBoom
Burlington, Ontario