Booksellers Pick the Winners

With "quality Christian fiction" an oxymoron no more, retailers are finding gold in a crop of new novels

by Angie Kiesling -- Publishers Weekly, 6/17/2002

For buyers of Christian fiction, the selection has been dominated by mediocre books, far outnumbering the good ones--at least until now. A handful of authors are credited with making the genre, as well as the market, grow up in recent years, earning Christian fiction a respectable place on bookstore shelves. While few in the industry would go so far as to label any Christian novel "literary," the genre certainly can be likened to a teenager--long past its infancy and ready to spring into adulthood.

"At this point we're beginning to see what I call thoughtful fiction," Janet Kobobel Grant, a California-based literary agent who represents several Christian novelists, tells PW. "One author that comes to mind is Jamie Langston Turner," who appeared on the publishing scene in 1998 with Some Wildflower in My Heart (Bethany). Her fourth novel, A Garden to Keep, also by Bethany, is a finalist in the 2002 Christy Awards for Christian fiction. Two other names mentioned on this shortlist were newcomer Lynn Austin (Eve's Daughters and Hidden Places, Bethany) and Roxanne Henke (After Anne, Harvest House).

It's not just agents, authors or publishers who note the raising of the bar in Christian fiction. Consumers not only appreciate more complex plots and three-dimensional characters, they're starting to demand them. Ginny Van Meter, general manager of Whittemore's, a large Christian bookstore in the Boston suburb of Needham Heights, Mass., says her fiction customers definitely expect more bang for their buck these days. "Romance can't be the only thing. Readers want more meat, more story line," Van Meter says.

While Tyndale's Left Behind series is a perennial seller for the store, not everyone wants to read about apocalyptic events, Van Meter notes. "You're either into that or not. Personally, I think they've gone too far for too long [with the series]. I'm very careful of how much I buy." Still, Whittemore's has placed about 200 preorders for The Remnant, book 10 in the series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, due out in July. "We'll sell a hundred the first week easily, then gradually another hundred over the next few weeks," Van Meter says. "People ask every week when it's coming out." Other hot sellers for the store are The Proposal by Lori Wick (Harvest House) and True Valor, book two of Dee Henderson's Uncommon Heroes series (Multnomah). Jan Karon, author of The Mitford Years series, also racks up strong sales at Whittemore's, especially her just-released In This Mountain (Viking).

Bestselling authors whose names cropped up again and again among booksellers PW surveyed include Jan Karon, Lori Wick, Dee Henderson, Francine Rivers, Terri Blackstock, Robert Whitlow, Ted Dekker, Randy Alcorn, Lauraine Snelling, Tracie Peterson, Beverly Lewis, Thomas Kinkade (better known for his "Painter of Light" artwork) and, of course, Janette Oke--the woman credited with putting Christian fiction on the map.

It was Oke's prairie romance books, first published in the early 1980s, that made Christian fiction a viable genre, although the books became known more for their heartwarming stories than for challenging plots and themes. Her latest title, A Distant Beacon, coauthored with T. Davis Bunn (Bethany), was listed as a current bestseller by almost every retailer contacted for this article, including Sam's Club. The first warehouse club to carry the Left Behind series, Sam's Club follows the New York Times bestseller list for its stocking decisions, and that strategy applies to fiction as well as nonfiction, spokesperson Melissa Berryhill says. Meanwhile, at Kmart, Left Behind is the leading Christian fiction seller, according to category manager Scott Delmar.

At Cedar Springs Christian Store in Knoxville, Tenn., Cape Refuge by Terri Blackstock (Zondervan) got high marks, as did The Proposal by Wick and Oke's A Distant Beacon. Dee Henderson, whose The Healer, book five in the O'Malley series (Multnomah), comes out this month, and Francine Rivers are also consistent sellers for the store. Cape Light, a hardcover novel by Thomas Kinkade and Katherine Spencer (Berkley), is doing well despite its higher price tag.

Cedar Springs book buyer/manager Suzanne Fowler notes that Left Behind is not strong right now, but she expects a surge in sales when Desecration, book nine, goes into paperback this month, followed by the July release of The Remnant. "With popular authors like these, whenever they release a new book it drives sales for a while. Then we see a drop-off until the next big book releases," Fowler says.

Unlike most CBA stores PW talked to, Cedar Springs breaks fiction into three subcategories--romance, mystery and general fiction--although the CBA industry urges booksellers to subcategorize into nine categories: general, classic/allegory, futuristic, historical, romance, western, suspense, contemporary and short stories. "We've never done any of the additional categories," Fowler says. "Some authors are difficult to pigeonhole, like Lori Wick--she's romantic but also historical. Categorizing also makes it more difficult for shelving. To keep it simple, we consign mysteries to one section and romance to another section, then everything else gets put together."

One CBA store that recently switched to the categorizing method is Lighthouse Christian Store, part of a five-store chain in the Los Angeles area. "We didn't do it because they're promoting it but because we have a lot of people come in and say, 'I read a lot of Lori Wick... do you have something else like that?' " Al Davis, manager of the Pasadena store, says, "Many people come in asking for like materials."

David McGee, book buyer for the LifeWay Christian Stores chain, says LifeWay took a try-and-see approach to the new categorization method. After years of using the standard alphabetical approach, LifeWay decided to break fiction into categories in its eight Tennessee stores as a test. The results of the test, in place since October 2001, are mixed. "Some consumers love it, some don't like it that much," McGee says. "People that do like it like it because they can find all the suspense novels in one place; the ones that don't like it don't like it because they read everything a particular author writes, and they like to have all the titles together. If an author writes in three different genres, they've got to go to three different places in the store. For two of our stores in one city, the jury is out--you could say we're paralyzed by analysis." Regardless, McGee says, if the industry stays with the categorization method, LifeWay will, too. "We have as many sections of fiction as we do Christian living in our newest stores, so breaking it apart makes sense."

Over the past month, top sellers for the LifeWay chain were Cape Refuge, The Proposal, Cape Light, Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers (Multnomah), A Distant Beacon and Karen Kingsbury's Halfway to Forever (Multnomah). What about Left Behind? "At one point I thought all nine [thus far] titles would dominate our list, but that has not happened," McGee says. "With the exception of the latest book [Desecration], the series has softened quite a bit, and even that title came on strong upon release then trailed off very quickly." He compares it to the general market trend that follows the national laydown date of a major title.

"Fiction titles are more fluid," McGee says. "In the Christian living genre, both paperback and hardback, a title will come on the list and stay for months, even years. That used to happen with fiction, namely because of the Left Behind series, but now it's not happening with anything. I think it shows the strength of the fiction department overall. There are more authors that are big now, like Terri Blackstock and Dee Henderson, instead of just a few who dominate the list."

Nicole Harper, fiction sales associate at Grapevine Books in Houston, says, "What we tend to like we encourage others to read." Evidently the handselling strategy pays off. A huge fan of Francine Rivers, Harper says she sells a lot of Rivers's Mark of the Lion series. Ditto for anything by Dee Henderson. "Christian fiction used to be just light, fluffy stuff," Harper says. "Now it's more right at your heart, with real-life emotions and situations. Just recently, the titles are so good that I step into a book and can't put it down."

At Good News Bible and Book Store in Fairbanks, Alaska, fiction accounts for about one-third of book sales, according to owner Deana McKnight. Her strongest authors are the Left Behind team of LaHaye/Jenkins and Francine Rivers, especially her fictional character studies such as the Gold Medallion Award-nominated Unafraid, about the biblical character of Mary, mother of Jesus. A small store, Good News keeps novels shelved alphabetically according to author, McKnight says.

Based on sales of the past two months, Christian fiction bestsellers at Barnes & Noble include This Present Darkness by Frank Peretti (Tyndale), recently repackaged as a mass market reprint; Tribulation and Desecration of the Left Behind series; Cape Light by Kinkade and Spencer; The Proposal by Wick; Redeeming Love by Rivers; Just Shy of Harmony by Philip Gulley (Harper San Francisco); A Distant Beacon by Oke; and Joshua by Joseph Girzone, a trade paperback edition from Simon & Schuster with a movie tie-in. "Since the movie came out on Good Friday, we've seen a pop in sales," spokesperson Carolyn Brown says.

Joshua has garnered many requests at a Books-A-Million outlet in the Orlando, Fla., area as well. According to Alan Desai, comanager of the Sanford, Fla., store, "We've had more requests for Joshua than anything else in the last few weeks, probably because of the movie tie-in," even though the movie never played in Orlando. Meanwhile, anticipation about The Remnant has generated brisk sales for the Left Behind backlist titles.

Noting trends in Christian fiction for B&N, Brown says the themes and authors that have been around for a long time continue to sell well, such as Janette Oke and Beverly Lewis. "With the success of the Left Behind series, we've also seen more and more people giving Christian fiction a shot, taking a second look at the genre. Now we see more action novels, books with a heroic twist. We've also noticed a shift in the way covers look. They've become more contemporary, more edgy. The old adage says you can't judge a book by its cover, but people do. There's always a core audience for a certain genre, but these little tweaks on the covers and themes get new readers off the fence."

Family Christian Stores senior book buyer Tim Way notes a similar trend in fiction--that mystery and suspense categories are strong, especially titles by Terri Blackstock and Dee Henderson. The top five sellers at press time were Cape Refuge, Cape Light, A Distant Beacon, Redeeming Love and Covenant Child, also by Blackstock. Way says Family considered moving to the categorization method--and even tried it for a while--but backed away, claiming the chain is "not ready for it" yet. "When you look at Christian fiction sections, they're not that huge--they're not like a Barnes & Noble," Way says.

If Carol Johnson, v-p of editorial/fiction at Bethany, has her way, that will change in the near future. Founder of the Christy Awards for Christian fiction, now in its third year, Johnson took the initiative to launch a Christian Fiction Task Force two years ago, composed of about 15 publishing associates. The ad hoc committee produced the manual A New Vision for Fiction in early 2001 to help retailers better market fiction in their stores. About 15,000 copies of a second edition, Christian Fiction: The Vision Expands, will be distributed free to retailers next month.

"The core message of the manual is that stories are a wonderful vehicle for truth," Johnson says. "Most of Jesus' teaching was done in stories, in parables. In the general market, over 50% of books sold are novels; in the CBA, even with the Left Behind phenomenon, novels represent less than 20% of books sold. That tells you there's room for growth."

Reflecting on the maturing of the Christian fiction genre, literary agent Grant recalls how she discovered author Robin Jones Gunn in the slush pile at Focus on the Family when she (Grant) was a staff editor there. It was the late 1980s, and Focus wanted to find an author who could speak authentically to teenage girls. Grant came across Gunn's proposal for the Christy Miller series--which went on to become a bestselling line for Focus. Meanwhile, Multnomah decided to turn its attention to the budding fiction market and lured Gunn with an offer to write adult fiction for its new Palisades imprint.

"Multnomah put a lot of marketing muscle behind Palisades, and it started doing really well," Grant says. "In a sense the market and the authors were growing up at the same time. Robin started with teen fiction and then made this leap into doing adult novels. It was very experimental. She learned how to do it as she was writing the book, companies were learning how to market these books as they did it and readers were learning how to look for more sophistication in writing. They pushed for more."

If current book trends hold steady, it looks like they'll get it.