Promotional Campaign Seeks to Boost Christian Indies

by Marcia Ford, Religion BookLine -- Publishers Weekly, 8/30/2006

In an effort to help struggling CBA stores, WestBow Press has launched a “$5 fiction” campaign in partnership with five Southern-oriented women’s magazines, whose combined readership totals more than 2.5 million. Under the promotion, readers can redeem a coupon from the magazines for the purchase of two novels at $5 each at Christian retail stores. The seven featured titles, all with Southern settings, ordinarily retail for $13.99-$14.99.

The promotion is the brainchild of marketing director Jennifer Deshler, who wanted to do a book club-type offer without forcing buyers to make a long-term commitment for future purchases. “As a kid I’d see these ads for 99-cent books, but then you’d join and get inundated with junk mail from the book club,” Deshler told RBL. “I didn’t want to do that to our customers, so I started thinking about how we could offer an incentive that consumers can’t pass up.”

The coupon will appear in the September/October issues of the Hoffman Media-owned mainstream periodicals Taste of the South, Tea Time, Southern Lady, Cooking with Paula Deen, and RHS Lifestyles. WestBow, Thomas Nelson’s fiction imprint, had done a prior promotion with the Red Hat Society’s RHS Lifestyles, offering a free copy of Diann Hunt’s Hot Flashes and Cold Cream to readers who responded to a survey, so it made sense to build on that relationship, Deshler said. Another of Hunt’s novels, RV There Yet?, is included in the current campaign; other qualifying titles are Fire Dancer by Colleen Coble; Eventide by Cindy Martinusen; Savannah from Savannah by Denise Hildreth; Adelaide Piper by Beth Webb Hart; Maggie by Charles Martin; and Reconstructing Natalie by Laura Jensen Walker.

The decision to limit the offer to purchases made at Christian stores is part of WestBow’s ongoing commitment to CBA-specific promotions, said senior v-p and publisher Allen Arnold, pointing to WestBow’s Signature editions of specific titles that include such features as extra content, a special introduction by the author, and a Q&A with the author, which are only available in certain stores. Said Deshler, “All publishers have heard the struggles CBA retailers are having. Both independents and chains are finding it harder to compete with stores like Wal-Mart and Barnes & Noble. We want to do exclusive promotions to boost sales and drive buyers into CBA stores.”