Nelson Out of CBA Winter Show

by Lynn Garrett, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 2/21/2007

With its announcement yesterday that Thomas Nelson will host a three-day Open House for its top Christian retail accounts in spring 2008, the company put a positive spin on its decision to end its participation at CBA Advance, the organization's struggling winter trade show.

The news sent waves of speculation—though hardly shock—through the Christian publishing world. Nelson's decision will almost certainly spur an exodus of publishers, who have felt burdened for the past several years by having to do two annual trade shows for the Christian retail channel, especially when one of the shows has seen a steep drop in retailer attendance.

Nelson CEO Mike Hyatt explained: "We are constantly assessing how best to use our marketing dollars, and it just wasn't a good investment for us anymore. We'd been looking for an alternative for some time, wanting to come up with a better way to connect with retailers." Under the Open House program, Nelson will host "about 200 of our key accounts—the top indies and Christian chains. They represent most of our business in that channel," said Hyatt.

Hyatt said Nelson is still committed to the International Christian Retail Show, held each July, "at this time," and will have a presence on the same scale as in the past few years.

The news was too fresh for any of the other publishers PW Daily contacted to have anything specific to say about their own plans for CBA Advance. Dave Lewis, v-p of sales at Baker Publishing Group, commented, "Nelson has said this before and then changed their minds in the 11th hour. But I think that they have evaluated the value of the show correctly. We hope the CBA organization would realize that what they keep telling us is no longer true: that 'the retailers want the show.' Since it is a good place to network with many markets in addition to the CBA market, we will wait a few months before making a final decision to attend or not in 2008."

Zondervan president Doug Lockhart was traveling and unavailable for comment. His office issued this statement: "CBA has requested that we not make final decisions until they lay out the plans going forward. We are respecting that request and will not make any decisions until that time." That position was echoed by Ginia Hairston, v-p of marketing and publicity for Random House's WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group.

CBA president Bill Anderson said the Nelson Open House plan may work for that company, but was not practical for all publishers. "If the Nelson model is applied to the hundreds of supplier accounts in a typical Christian store, retailers would be out of their store most of the year just visiting their suppliers.We think retailers will quickly see this as a very inefficient way of doing business," Anderson said."This feels like further splintering of the channel, and in the end that doesn't serve retailers well at all."