Who Cares What We Think About Dating?

Evidently a lot of people.

After doing some data crunching from sales numbers at Christian retail (ECPA STATS), Hungry Planet's Marriable: Taking the Desperate Out of Dating and Dateable: are you? are they? are tops in the Relationships-Dating subcategories for adults and teens respectively.

Marriable, released six months ago, is ranked #1 in sales during that period while Dateable is #1 by a 2 to 1 margin over the #2 title over the past year (it was released in 2003.)

This completely blows me away considering some of the noted authors below us on those lists. It just reinforces that the attention we pay to titling, cover design, unique interiors, and using a relevant voice all contribute to successful titles regardless of the publisher's most coveted author asset:

Platform.

To date, no Hungry Planet books or author has embarked on a non-stop speaking schedule nor do they pastor a megachurch or run a Fortune 500 company. Plain and simple, if a book meets the needs of a significant segment of the population and it's creatively packaged and communicates effectively, it sells.

Now it might not sell overnight. And its chances of hitting a NYT best-seller list are outside at best. But books that pay attention to visual details and potential disconnects with its audience will sell. And eventually, hopefully, the General Market bookseller takes notice.

Case in point: Wal-Mart is carrying Marriable for the month of February as part of their Valentine's Day merch. Kudos to the sales and distribution force at Baker Publishing Group in making this happen!

Of course, the book looks great and reads pretty well too.

Our core retailer and audience is in the Christian marketplace. But many of our books have mainstream appeal like Marriable and Dateable and that's why placement in the general market can be quite exciting from a 'tipping point' perspective.

I have to admit, it's kind of fun seeing books from other publishers that have wider mainstream distribution in our rear view mirror. At the same time, it only serves to remind me that, ultimately, if the consumer/reader isn't happy, books aren't sold no matter who the author or publisher.

We've got a few challenging titles releasing this year. Challenging in the sense of the consumer and the reader are potentially two different people and the titling and covers are not what you'd expect at Christian retail. One such title for a new teen girls' title on modesty arrived from the printer today. It's been generating a buzz with book buyers and distributors since last Fall.

I'll try and post more on our approach to publishing Sexy Girls: Hot Hot Is Too Hot? in the next day or two.

National Holiday

One hour til kickoff and the Chili is simmering. I love my new home in football crazy Tennessee, but miss my overly caffienated bretheren in the Northwest.

True confession~ I came ever so close to wearing my Jim Zorn throwback jersey to church this morning...

Prediction: 27-19

Go Seahawks!

UPDATE- I dislike referees.

ABA bookstores starting to 'get' Inspirational...I said 'starting'.

One of the fun, yet expensive parts of our job is hunting for inspiration in bookstores large and small. Rarely do we come away from a Barnes & Noble or Borders without some new cover ideas, trim sizes, and other visual treatments for books we have in development. I say expensive because I can't remember half the ideas I had an hour ago, so that means I'm having the nice clerk bag up my inspiration in a doggie book bag.

The funny thing is, even though Hungry Planet books are mainly found in the Christian Living or Self Help sections, we don't go into those stacks for inspiration, just to monitor who's face out, featured, and what they're running low on from HP.

**Disclaimer- My wife and I buy all our books from local CBA retailers. We know the store managers by name. If they don't have what we're wanting or have ever heard of it, we order it on line. We also don't buy used books to read, unless they're out of print or we're merely using them for research. When I say research, I mean if we're thinking about doing a book on teens and their relationship with their parents, we might buy every book on the subject to see what's out there and if there's a better alternative already out there. New book purchases keep our lights on. Used ones don't. Same for other authors and publishers. I've bought our last two cars online. We buy everything online...except books. Support your local 'small box' bookseller! End disclaimer**

Today's trip to the B&N at Opry Mills (next to the Grand Ole Opry for you country music fans) was a double whammy of excitement.

First off, featured top shelf, face out with four other selections was the HP book, The Gospel Unplugged by Rich Wagner. This book came out with little fanfare last summer but has had some killer reviews and is starting to pick up steam. Rich is one of our authors that reminds me of Oswald and C.S. Lewis (one of his favs) in classic writing style but he tackles meaty topics in a very accessible way. TGU is a deep deviotional of 20+ CCM songs from various artists using the lyrics of each song as sermon-concentrate. Rich just adds water.

Second but (sorry Rich!) more importantly, I couldn't find any of our Young Adult books in the Christian Living section. Not surprising really, since ABA bookstores do an awful job with Christian books. When they use categories, they're akin to Library of Congress classifications in stead of demographical or topic need. But most often, the entire section is alphabetical by author. Ugh.

Oh well, I thought, proceeding back to the Children's section to look for books for my 5 month old daughter (read: drool-proof.) I occassionally glance through the Young Adult section back there, finding 90% fiction and the only non-fiction being O'Reilly Factor for Kids, Chicken Soup for the Bulemic Teenage Soul (et al), and the obligitory 'Dr. Phil's son wrote a book so we must stock it' placement.

But lo and behold, someone at B&N has seen the light! Sitting right next to the Teen Fiction was "Teen Inspirational"! Of course, there were all the ABA no brainers (Left Behind for Teens, Melody Carlson fiction, etc.) but our books were there as well. Very cool that they're starting to get it.

So Barnes and Noble and Books-a-Million have figured it out teens don't browse alphabetically spine out in the Christian Living section. Hoo-aah!! Could Borders be close behind? {nudge, wink wink, say-no-more}

By the way, any retailers reading this should immediately move The Gospel Unplugged out of the book section and merchandise it in the Christian music section. Don't let the alphabet and the medium keep you in a box or that box you find your retail business in just might be six feet under.