Susan Neal, CEO of the Christian Indie Publishing Association (CIPA), doesn't just have a message for Christian authors who can't get a major publisher contract. She has an exhortation: Get out there!

Self-publish. Find a pay-to-play press. Land with a small publisher (less than a half-million in revenue a year, by Neal's definition) who will get their book on Amazon and Ingram distribution. Self-promotion, Neal stresses, is still the ticket to sales and making "three times more on each book than waiting and hoping for royalties." Even authors who have had books published by major houses are retaking control of their work, says Neal. "They get the rights back when it goes out of print and they still have a great, viable book. They snazz it up with it up a great new cover and republish it with a new ISBN."

And more authors and small publishers stepping up. Membership in CIPA has grown from 200 authors and publishers in 2019 to 500 today. Authors submitted 200 entries (only new titles were eligible) to the annual Christian Indie Awards in 21 categories presented in May. Winning awards, however, is only one of several ways to attract attention along with reaching out to broadcast/podcast hosts, neighborhood book clubs, even to hospital gift shops.

Neal, who has published nine books and has an MBA, says Christian authors certainly don't lack motivation.

"It's a calling from God to further the kingdom of God," Neal says. And it can be done with any subject under heaven. When Neal wrote Seven Steps to Get Off Sugar and Carbohydrates ("It's Christian because I say how we need God to break our addiction...") she queried 100 podcasters to land 30 podcast appearances—and sold 5,000 books. The CIPA website offers a list of 100 radio and podcast hosts along with a plethora of professional marketing tips.

Cheers and prayers also matter to success, according to Deb Haggerty, publisher and editor-in-chief of Elk Lake Publishing Inc., whose house promises to offer "a family where cheerleaders and prayer warriors support you on your journey." Six of their authors won honors with CIPA this year including first-place awards for Donna Wyland in children's picture books with Psalms in Rhyme for Little Hearts and for Kristen Terrette in speculative fiction for Safe Harbor.

'Unabashedly Christian'

When Haggerty bought Elk Lake Publishing, in June 2016, it had 45 authors and fewer than 60 books in print since its founding in 2001. "Now, we have over 300 authors and more than 600 books in print. We are publishing between 75 and 105 books a year," she says. She describes Elk Lake, based in Plymouth, MA., as "a mid-range" traditional publishing house with a six-person staff including herself, and "an interesting business model" for its "unabashedly Christian" titles.

"When I bought the company, I felt led to have it be a company that worked with new authors who probably couldn't get an agent or couldn't get one of the big five interested because they don't have massive social media platforms but who were excellent writers," Haggerty says. "My task was to take their books and put them out to the public in as professional a manner as we possibly could to give them an audience. Although we are an S corporation, we function like a Christian ministry. Neither my husband nor I take any salary. All of the money that's earned goes back into the company."

Elk Lake doesn't pay advances, but authors get 40% of the sales price from the very first sale forward. The books move on Amazon and through distribution by Ingram. But, Haggerty says, "75% of our books are sold by authors who buy the books from us (set at 50% of the cost of the book) and sell them themselves at speaking engagements or signings that they arranged themselves, 23% of our books are sold through Amazon and only 2% through bookstores"

One of Haggerty's points to the clever marketing of one retired minister-turned-author as an example of a success story.

"He sent a press release about his book out to all of the association pastors for the denomination but he got only one reply. I said, 'Think outside the box.' So, he thought of places where people either are captive and have to wait a lot or are older and might want to read a lot," she recalls. He convinced a hospital gift shop to take 50 copies and they sold them in two afternoons. The next day, he went to a local community center event and sold 80 books. "He told me, 'I probably have influenced more people for Christ through this book than I did in 40 years of ministry.' "

Big success with small retail

Victoria Duerstock had written several successfully published books with houses such as Worthy and Abingdon Press when she began to wonder what it looked like to actually manage the parts of the process that the author doesn't touch.

"How does distribution work? How did the sales work? How do you know when that email marketing plan went? As a believer, my faith tells me time is short and I want leave a positive impact before time runs out," Duerstock says. So she launched End Game Press in January of 2021. The company's 2021 five-title debut list included two books by her: Navigating Minefields: A Young Man’s Blueprint for Success on Life’s Battlefield, co-written with Bethany Jett, with positive messages for teen boys drawn from the biblical book of Proverbs without directly quoting the Bible, and a 60-day devotional title Guard Your Heart & Home: Pursuing Peace in Your Living Space, is still on sale at a Tractor Supply in Jackson, Miss.

Within three years, the publisher was getting more than 1,000 submissions annually from authors, (which eventually pushed them to shift to requiring submissions through only agents).

End Game Press is a smaller house, with 15 titles published this year so far and 13 more ahead in 2024. Two of their authors took 2024 Christian Indie honors, including first place in the devotional category for Michelle Medlock Adams and Andy Clapp's The Christmas Devotional: Hope & Humor for the Holidays, and a third-place award in children's picture books with a book co-authored by Michelle Medlock Adams and Andy Clapp and published by End Game's children's imprint, Wren & Bear, which is headed by Adams.

Getting into the big stores like Barnes & Noble or Books-a-Million is a "pain point," she says, and most Christian bookstores have gone away. But stores that sell baby items like carrying children's and baby books like Moo Moo Nap Nap Nap (an August board book by Sarah Philpott).

"We are a Christian publisher and we have resources that are discipleship and church-oriented, but we also have trade market titles that are for family or friends, and that are faith-filled even if not overtly so." Duerstock says. "We love really beautiful gift books, photography books or short devotionals that will be nice items you can put in someone's hand at a small shop or boutique."