ECPA Conference Looks at New Markets, Channels

by Lauren F. Winner, Religion BookLine -- Publishers Weekly, 5/3/2006

The Evangelical Christian Publishing Association wrapped up its annual Management Conference May 2, with 160 movers and shakers in the evangelical publishing world gathered in Newport Beach, Calif., to ponder the state of the field. This year's conference theme was "Serving the Church," and attendees were offered two days of panels examining different corners of American Christianity: Black churches, Hispanic churches, mega-churches, postmodern or "emerging" churches. "We want to explore areas significant in the faith but underrepresented in evangelical publishing," said Mark Kuyper, president and CEO of ECPA. "There is an evangelical community far larger than what we've published to. We need to learn about the church so that we can get resources to them and communicate their thoughts."

ECPA announced the appointments of four new board members, including Carol Holquist, publisher of Discovery House, bringing the number of women on the board to two for the first time. At the meeting ECPA also gave its semi-annual sales awards, platinum for titles that have sold over 1,000,000 copies, and gold for titles that have sold over 500,000. Platinum winners included FamilyLife Publishing's Resurrection Eggs Devotional booklet, NavPress's The Message (Bible) and Zondervan's What on Earth Am I Here For?. Gold Awards went to Joel Osteen's Daily Readings From Your Best Life Now, published by Warner Faith; two novels by Beverly Lewis, The Covenant and The Postcard, both published by Bethany House; and nine other books and Bibles.

Sales channels were a widely discussed topic at the conference. Industry insiders have long recognized that the way Christian readers shop for books has changed. A study commissioned by ECPA in the fall of 2005 found that only 12% of households that purchased Christian books bought them at Christian stores. That means 88% are buying their books elsewhere—at general interest chains, which have expanded their religion shelf-space; online; and at non-book outlets. The same study found that people who buy Christian books spend 50% more money on books in a given year than shoppers who buy only non-Christian books. "People who buy Rick Warren," said Kuyper, "are also buying cookbooks and John Grisham novels."

Just prior to the conference, ECPA and Bowker announced the launch of a new joint trade publication, BookWire Publishing News & Reviews. The full-color, tabloid-style quarterly will be distributed free to 12,000 book professionals, including bookstore buyers and librarians.

On the last day of the conference, Bowker announced it had hired away Kelly Gallagher, head of business development at ECPA for the past six years, to be general manager of the business intelligence segment of Bowker. Among the programs Gallagher will oversee in his new post are the Books in Print IntelliMarket system and the PubTrack sales data warehouse system. He will continue to work closely with ECPA on these projects. Before joining ECPA, Gallagher had been at Beacon Hill Press, including four years as publisher.