Blogger: Janet Kobobel Grant
Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, CA
In my continuing list of 2010 wishes for publishing, my third wish is that publishing associations would work together rather than protect their territory.
Because publishing is in such a state of flux, doesn’t it make sense that everyone work to save the ship rather than arrange the deck chairs? Yet I see organizations that should be working in concert fussing over trivialities. Case in point, in the Christian publishing industry, the two giants are the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) and the Christian Booksellers Association (CBA). In 2009, ECPA attempted to create a major event in Dallas that would draw readers from across the country to meet well-known authors and to hear those authors speak. The event fizzled out for a variety of reasons, costing the publishers who participated significant dollars that ordinarily would have been spent on CBA’s summer event, the International Christian Retailers Show (ICRS). That left an already weakened ICRS on life support.
Wouldn’t it make more sense for these two organizations to band together and to create one event that could breathe new life into both associations? For example, why doesn’t ECPA have a bookfest the weekend before ICRS? Last year’s venue, Denver, would have been perfect for such an event because the city’s downtown is a walking mall. Put up tables for authors to sign books and speaking platforms for them to address audiences. This would give keynote authors a reason to come to ICRS, and it would give booksellers a chance to meet the authors and hear about their latest releases.
In turn, having a bookfest would benefit CBA by bringing booksellers, authors and readers together, generating renewed interest and greater attendance at ICRS.
Instead, what we saw in 2009 was two costly events that drove a wedge in Christian publishing and asked publishers to expend twice the amount of money on exhibits and staffing they spent the year before.
Come on people, let’s get together! Yup, that my wish #3.
Now, I’m all ears to hear what you think.
When faced with a challenge, our first instinct is often to work harder when we’d actually do better to work smarter. The instance you describe appears to be an example of two rivals working harder to promote their own companies when, in fact, it’s the entire industry that faces the challenge. Why do we seem to work off the principle that success is a finite comodity as we grapple for our individual chunks of it? Working together to promote the industry would, indeed, be smarter, and would mutually benefit everyone involved.
Excellent point. I think this can extend to authors. Self promotion is a difficult thing in terms of time, money and attention to detail. Yet we have authors by the gazillions forging new territory with each book they sell.
If writers worked together–outside the box–and for the greater good of their readers, great things could happen!
It would be a welcome miracle to see this happen. Christians working together is the heartcry of many of us who work in church ministry as well.
My hubs, Pastor Steve, works full on with the concept of everyone in the Christian community working together – sharing resources, facilities, joining with projects that are already doing a good work, partnering, being flexible, and sharing the benefits as well as the work.
It’s a as good a time as any for Christian’s in the publishing industry to show the world the difference Christ brings – by demonstrating the counter-cultural, counter-intuitive principles of living inside a community of love.
I think Christian publishing has done this in a number of ways, but your thoughts about large events is timely and exciting.
I’m involved with a multi-city women’s ministry that is seeking to do this very thing with churches. Instead of each church competing, we seek to link the needs and resources of all the churches. So far, most pastors ask us, “Where have you been for so long?”
If this can be done between churches in various denominations in several nearby cities, why not in the publishing industry?
I attended the Dallas ECPA event. It was awesome, professional, and grand in a wide scale. The only problem (and it was the killer) was that so few attended. I almost wept wondering where the local Christians were.
But I agree. Work together, especially during these tough economic times.
Wonderful idea, Janet. I love the Cape Town International Book Fair. It combines a publisher’s trade fair with sessions for readers and writers and gets LOTS of public participation.
YES!!
The Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, TN was a pleasure to attend last October, in spite of the inclement weather.
The line to meet Kate DiCamillo was staggering, and gave me hope! 🙂
It was my first jaunt to such an affair as an author. I met some outstanding people willing to share their kindness, expertise and time (you know who you are!). All in all, a very worthwhile endeavor.
It is a well-publicized event in TN, held on the grounds of the State Capitol. Attendees enjoyed several days of watching puppet shows, participating in parades, hearing authors speak, attending forums, buying BOOKS!
It was good for all aspects of our industry.
(And great fun for me personally!)
Brilliant insight, Janet. I hope that the movers and shakers are listening. In Canada, we have one major Christian Publishing/Book gathering called “Write! Canada” which just celebrated its 25th year. It is sponsored by The Word Guild, and meets in mid-June in Guelph Ontario. Because Canadian Christians pull together on this one, we are able to bring in high-quality communicators, such as Chip MacGregor who did our Professional Writers Track so effectively last June.
Ed Hird+
http://battleforthesoulofcanada.blogspot.com
Yes Janet – Brilliant idea! A simple and doable solution.
Thanks for your support of the idea. While we can’t control what happens with trade associations, we can at least think about how to band together as writers and as readers.
Janet, I’m passing this onto some like-minded folks who have taken this very suggestion to both CBA and ECPA. Maybe if enough of us rally for this idea, they might get the clue. Thanks!
Janet,
It is always good to hear what you have to say, and there is merit in your suggestion. Of course what you and your readers may not know is that the idea of some form of collaboration was discussed early on in the development of a consumer awareness building solution. Other organizations, including CBA, GMA,and NRB were part of the early meetings. We strongly believe in partnering and will only do so if we know there is clear win for the other company.
I would never consider CBA a rival company as one of your readers suggested. We exist for different purposes, (CBA serves Christian retailers and we serve Christian publishers), but we have worked together on many initiatives including our recent joint awards event. We even dropped our own trade shows in part because we viewed them as competitive with CBA. And even as we promoted the Christian Book Expo (CBE), we encouraged store owners to attend ICRS. We have had several meetings over the last few years with the expressed purpose of finding areas where we can work together and support each other.
At the end of all of the meetings and discussions there were several reasons why we pursued CBE on our own. There are too many to get into here, but one example was related to location. Most book fairs are not profitable in the first two to three years and have to repeat in the same city to build an audience. CBA’s trade show changes venue each year, which is common for a business to business event, and because of their size they have to contract for years in the future.
I think we can, and will, keep looking for a solution to raise awareness of Christian authors and content that benefits the entire industry. We are both non-profit service organizations with a focus on serving our constituencies over our organizations. We will continue to diligently and creatively look for opportunities to act interdependently as the body of Christ.
Blessings,
Mark Kuyper
ECPA President and CEO
Mark, thanks for giving us the inside scoop on attempts trade associations have made to work together. I just hope you all won’t give up on finding common ground and on ways to develop more synergy. As you know, we’re all in this together, and the more we can help each other, the more likely we’ll successfully get books into readers’ hands.