The president and CEO of CBA for 24 years, Anderson was presented with the honor by Chairman-elect George Thomsen who said that Anderson had been "a true champion for Christian retail and Christian retailers."

Distributor Spring Arbor (SA) is raising its profile at the show to roll out "reinvigorated" services to the Christian retail market.

The company is also to unveil a new logo which Skip Prichard, president and CEO of owners Ingram Content Group (ICG), said "symbolizes our renewal and our recommitment to the Christian market as the relevant and reliable category leader."

Among the changes are an expanded inventory to include more family-friendly films, music, Bible covers and communion ware. Earlier this year, the company introduced Spring Arbor Wire, a free desktop application providing retailers with news updates on releases and products.

Christian novelists laughed as they heard themselves described as the "Rodney Dangerfields of the publishing world" on their gala night.

Author Lisa Samson said that men and women who write Christian fiction shared the late comedian's famous lament of not being respected, in her keynote address at the 11th annual Christy Awards, Saturday night.

Christian publishing guru Sally Stuart was honored for her service to other writers with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Advanced Writers & Speakers Association (AWSA).

The author of the celebrated industry directory, the Christian Writers' Market Guide-now in its 25th year-received the award during the organization's annual Golden Scroll Awards from author Susan Titus Osborn.

Christian retailers received a strong dose of encouragement last night from best-selling author and former pastor Randy Alcorn during the Worship Him service.

The well-attended event, which featured music from Jeremy Camp and The Museum, spotlighted an informal question-and-answer session between CBA Chair-elect George Thomsen and Alcorn-author of If God Is Good (Multnomah Books) and Heaven (Tyndale House Publishers).

Alcorn shared how a couple who owned a Christian store in Gresham, Ore., had a "very large role" in his life after he became a Christian as a teen.

Members of the American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) are manning the group's booth to talk about its free online guide to the category, www.fictionfinder.com.

Christian retailers and publishers wondering how to deal with the challenges of the digital book revolution were urged to learn lessons from how the music industry handled the shift, in the show's opening general session: Digital/Mortar: Store Value in a Digital Age.

Music companies were 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, said panel discussion participant David Crace, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of EMI Christian Music Group.

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 advised.

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

In addition, Crace said that 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," he said, "so there's a real benefit."

Other panel members encouraged retailers to build strong personal relationships with their customers so that if shoppers did choose to buy digital books, they may look to their favorite brick-and-mortar store as the source.

Also taking part in the 90-minute session led by Mardel Christian & Education President Jason Green were Mark Kuyper, president and CEO of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association; Darin Sennett, director of strategic projects for Powells.com; Chris Smith, director of sales for Spring Arbor; and Amanda Edmonds, director of strategic partnerships for Google Books.