Zondervan significantly increased its general-market sales in a 10-year period, Vice President of Sales and Forecasting Verne Kenney told an international publishing forum organized by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association.

General-market revenues grew from 1.5% for the company to 17.7% between 1993 and last year, while the CBA channel's share fell from 72.9% to 52.1% over the same period, although the Christian-retail channel remained the company's core business, he said.

ABA sales grew from 4.5% to 9.1% during the same decade, he said during his session on "Broadening Your Customer Market by Expanding Your Channels of Distribution."

"They are getting more and more serious about this thing called 'Christian,'" he said of non-CBA retailers. One national chain had told Zondervan that it had conducted a study which found that 85% of 'religion' category sales were Christian, Kenney said.

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