February 7, 2007   • BEHIND THE NEWS: CBA EXPO SPECIAL COVERAGE   • Shrinking Attendance, Mutinous Publishers   • Slow for Many, Hopeful for Some   • Film Tie-ins a Bright Spot • Q&A   • Thoughts on a Meaningful Life: RBL Talks with Bob Abernethy and William Bole • RELIGION IN REVIEW   • Four Reviews Coming in Publishers Weekly on Monday, February 12   • A Starred Review Coming in PW on Monday, February 12   • An Original RBL Review • BESTSELLERS: February Borders Inc. Bestsellers • COMING ATTRACTIONS • HOW TO SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE BEHIND THE NEWS: CBA EXPO SPECIAL COVERAGE Shrinking Attendance, Mutinous Publishers by Lynn Garrett and Jana Riess Attendance at CBA Expo—the trade show component of the association of evangelical Christian retailers' winter meeting held Jan. 29-Feb. 2 in Indianapolis—was down more than 20% from the previous year, to 1,091. CBA president Bill Anderson said the association will be examining reasons for the decline in the next few days. Attendance at Expo has been trending downward over the past five years, and exhibitor numbers also have been falling steadily, from 274 in 2002 to 191 this year. There is rampant grumbling among publishers about the necessity for two annual trade shows. One industry insider who spoke off the record said, "If one of the major publishers breaks ranks and doesn't come, there's going to be a mass exodus." Group Publishing didn't show, Harper San Francisco had a reduced presence, and Nelson talked about having no space on the floor but ended up exhibiting after all. Despite disappointment at attendance levels over the past few years, Zondervan ramped up its attention to the booth this year, moving key meetings out of the usual off-site hospitality suite and onto the show floor. Read the full story... Slow for Many, Hopeful for Some by Jana Riess Author signings at Expo were minimal and most did not attract huge crowds. But Thursday morning saw some wrap-around-the-aisle traffic at the Moody booth, as dozens of attendees queued up for cake and a book signing by relational elder statesman Gary Chapman (The Five Love Languages). Still, by late Thursday afternoon, the show floor was deserted. For some publishers, this show was the final straw in the debate about whether to keep coming. "I am seriously reconsidering whether we will do this show at all next year," said Kim Shimer, sales and promotions manager for Judson Press. Even though Judson downsized its booth from two spaces last year to one, the floor traffic did not seem to justify even the reduced expense of attending, she reported. "The one thing everyone is saying is, 'why don't they take this down to just one show a year?'" Read the full story... Film Tie-ins a Bright Spot by Jana Riess Expo might have been moribund during the day, but the evenings showed some signs of life. Two events were well-attended: premieres for feature films that hit theaters this month. On Wednesday night, evangelical novelist Francine Rivers and a standing-room-only crowd saw the film adaptation of her 1998 book The Last Sin-Eater starring Academy Award-winning actress Louise Fletcher and Golden Globe nominee Henry Thomas (of E.T. fame). Rivers and producer Michael Landon, Jr., got a standing ovation at the end of the movie; it opens on some 500 screens on February 9. Tyndale House released a special trade paperback edition of the novel, which includes a full-color inset with movie images. Mavis Sanders, corporate publicist for Tyndale, said the reissue has gone back to press for a second run; the novel now has 193,000 total copies in print. Read the full story...   Q&A Thoughts on a Meaningful Life: RBL Talks with Bob Abernethy and William Bole by Jana Riess RBL: Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly will celebrate its 10th anniversary this fall. Bob, as the show’s founder, did you ever expect it would last this long, or that it would result in a book of interviews? Abernethy: Neither. I just didn’t think about it. We were so busy trying to do it each week, and to increase the number of PBS stations that would carry us. We’ve been fronted each year amazingly generously by the Lilly endowment. Who knew back then that they would fund us for ten years? The book really wasn’t a gleam in our eyes until a couple years ago. We’ve talked to a lot of wonderful people, and we would use little bits and fragments of them on the air, and a little bit also on the Web site, but most of the interviews just sat in the videotape library. Read the full story... RELIGION IN REVIEW Four Reviews Coming in Publishers Weekly on Monday, February 12 The Shape of Love: Discovering Who We Are, Where We Came From, and Where We're Going Masaru Emoto. Doubleday, $18.95 (196p) ISBN 978-0-385-51837-6 As author of several spirituality-cum-science titles including The Hidden Messages in Water, Emoto introduced the world to his claim that a sample of water is capable of responding to human words. READ FULL REVIEW Digging In: Tending to Life in Your Own Backyard Robert Benson. WaterBrook, $12.99 paper (208p) ISBN 978-1-4000-7173-9 Benson, well known for his books on prayer and meditation, turns his heart toward home in this lovely book about putting down roots. READ FULL REVIEW Contemplating Reality: A Practitioner's Guide to the View in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism Andy Karr. Shambhala, $16.95 paper (240p) ISBN 978-1-59030-429-7 Buddhism emphasizes direct experience and devalues conceptual thinking, but that doesn't mean it is devoid of philosophical reasoning and inquiry. READ FULL REVIEW The Godfile: Ten Approaches to Personalizing Prayer Aryeh Ben David. Devora [Ingram and Baker & Taylor, dist.], $16.95 (136p) ISBN 978-1-932687-93-4; $12.95 paper ISBN 978-1-932687-94-1 Rabbi Ben David's goal—to encourage readers to develop a relationship with God—unfolds in computer jargon in this guide to Jewish prayer. READ FULL REVIEW A Starred Review Coming in PW on Monday, February 12 The Life of Meaning: Reflections on Faith, Doubt, and Repairing the World Edited By Bob Abernethy And William Bole. Seven Stories, $29.95 (352p) ISBN 978-1-58322-758-9 Faith and doubt stand in loving tension in this splendid collection edited by Bole, a religion writer, and Abernethy, founder and host of the PBS program Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. The book draws from the extensive interviews the series has conducted with religious luminaries and writers, some of whom appear more than once. The interviews are loosely arranged into themes of prayer; suffering and the problem of evil; encountering religious pluralism; preparing for death and the afterlife; and the varieties of religious practice. Not all of the contributors describe themselves as religious ("You know what an agnostic is?" asks the agnostic near-centenarian Studs Terkel. "A cowardly atheist"). Most of those profiled, however, have walked a long path of religious devotion, including Desmond Tutu, Jimmy Carter, Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama, Anne Lamott, William Sloane Coffin, Martin Marty, Frederica Mathewes-Green and Phyllis Tickle (PW's former contributing editor in religion). With such an amazing cast of characters, it's practically impossible to go wrong, and this collection doesn't miss a step. The section on suffering is particularly perceptive ("I know that where there is no suffering, nothing happens," novelist Madeleine L'Engle says). This is a rich feast of accumulated wisdom. (Apr. 3) An Original RBL Review Nothing: Something to Believe In Nica Lalli. Prometheus, $17 paper (224p) ISBN 978-1-59102-529-0 Books on atheism are red-hot this year, and Lalli's adds something fresh to the mix: rather than being an angry apologetic, it's an engaging personal account of non-belief. Raised in Chicago and New York to free-thinking parents who seem to have provided little supervision, Lalli had sporadic encounters with religion at her friends' churches and synagogues as a child. A disastrous high school ski trip turned her off completely when religious students tried to convert her with manipulative tactics. In college, she fell in love with a fellow agnostic, whom she married after a brief stint of what she calls "living in sin." Although Lalli got along well with her Christian mother-in-law, her self-righteous sister- and brother-in-law were a different story, and much of the memoir's second half explores serious family tensions. "I got the feeling that I had to respect them for their religion but they were not going to return the favor," Lalli writes. Although Lalli doesn't come across as being quite as open-minded as she claims to be, she does see herself as an equal-opportunity agnostic, as skeptical about a tarot reading as she is about Christian platitudes. This memoir is well-written and often acerbically funny, an edgy quest for meaning outside the boundaries of organized religion. (Mar.) BESTSELLERS: February Borders Inc. Religion Bestsellers Hardcover The God Delusion. Richard Dawkins. Houghton Mifflin The Purpose-Driven Life Rick Warren. Zondervan Your Best Life Now Joel Osteen. FaithWords Letter to a Christian Nation Sam Harris. Knopf Get Out of that Pit Beth Moore. Thomas Nelson Captivating John Eldredge, Stasi Eldredge. Thomas Nelson Love & Respect Emerson Eggerichs. Thomas Nelson How to See Yourself as You Really Are Dalai Lama, Jeffrey Hopkins. Atria The Confident Woman Joyce Meyers. FaithWords Epicenter Joel C. Rosenberg. Tyndale Paperback 90 Minutes in Heaven Don Piper with Cecil Murphey. Revell The Five Love Languages Gary Chapman. Moody/Northfield The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason Sam Harris. Norton Awakening the Buddha Within Lama Surya Das. Broadway When the Heart Waits Sue Monk Kidd. Harper San Francisco The Universe in a Single Atom Dalai Lama. Morgan Road Books Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis. Harper San Franciso Jerusalem Countdown John Hagee. Strang/FrontLine Battlefield of the Mind Joyce Meyer. FaithWords The Screwtape Letters C.S. Lewis. Harper San Francisco     COMING ATTRACTIONS Next week in RBL, we’ll talk with Elaine Pagels and Karen King, authors of Reading Judas.   PW Religion BookLine from Publishers Weekly Editors: Lynn Garrett (lgarrett@reedbusiness.com); Daisy Maryles (dmaryles@reedbusiness.com) Contributing Editor: Jana Riess © 2007 Reed Business Information. Published weekly. 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