Barnes & Noble calls it Christian Inspiration; Books-A-Million and Borders, simply Inspirational. Independent stores label the category in a variety of ways, depending on the size and location of the store; some ignore it altogether. It's a category that has become so loosely defined in the general market that there's often no telling what a customer will find on a shelf when any form of the word "inspiration" serves as its label.
"I get scared every time I look at this," says Wendell Lotz, v-p of Ingram Database Development, as he scanned Spring Arbor's list of bestselling CBA inspirational titles on his computer screen. As chair of the Book Industry Standards and Communication general committee, Lotz has a greater interest than most in seeing that books are categorized accurately. Sure enough, the number 1 title, WaterBrook's Every Man's Battle—a practical guide to overcoming sexual temptation—did not belong on the inspirational list. Lotz removed the word from the book's description.
"That term does tend to be a default," Lotz tells PW, adding that there's little discernible difference between titles categorized as "general" and as "inspiration" in the BISAC religion heading. "The last time we revised the religion section, we actually looked at that problem and asked, Are we using two terms that mean the same thing? The consensus around the table was, Yes, we are. But we still can't get rid of the term 'inspiration.' "
Meanwhile, the evangelical market may not be trying to get rid of the term, but that doesn't mean it isn't problematic for Christian booksellers as well. "We'd have to agree that inspiration is a catchall term for a lot of books that probably ought not to be there," says Doug Ross, president of Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, which created the Christian Product Category (CPC) codes to provide Christian publishers with more detailed categories than BISAC offers. "We didn't invent the term. It just kind of grew up around us."
No Consensus Here
Evangelical publishers, however, differ in the way they perceive the category. Some, like Howard Publishing, like using the word "inspirational" because of its crossover appeal; for others, including Thomas Nelson, it's much too broad a term. But no matter what term is used, the process of categorizing a title can be tricky.
"I find categories to be a bit of torture sometimes," admits Baker/Revell acquisitions director Lonnie Hull DuPont, a veteran of Guideposts magazine, known for its broad definition of inspiration. "We need to use CPC and BISAC, but sometimes BISAC doesn't have anything close to what the book is. It's not what you'd call an exact science." Among Revell's recent or upcoming inspirational titles are three devotional and prayer books, several titles on helping others, a compilation of poems by Helen Steiner Rice and Don Piper's account of his afterlife experience when he was declared clinically dead.
To add to the torture, general market stores sometimes shelve inspirational titles under another catchall category, Christian living (for a feature on trends in that capacious category, see Religion Publishing's Black Hole) Jerry Park, executive v-p of Nelson's Christian Books Group, sympathizes with consumers who face the challenge of finding what they want in those stores. "Do they go through every title, pull out every book and read the back copy for it to make sense? I'm of the school that you tell a customer exactly what a book is. You don't make it hard to discern," he says.
The big chain bookstores, Park says, have failed to take advantage of the "gathered wisdom" of their Christian counterparts—and it shows not only in their shelving decisions, but also in the amount of space allotted to spirituality titles. "If Barnes & Noble or Borders would study the CPC codes, they would see how the folks who do nothing but sell Christian books divide their sections up. They don't need to figure it out for themselves," he says. "If I were one of those stores and thinking about growth, I'd also be resetting my store to allow for more square footage for spirituality titles."
General trade stores' tendency to lump Inspirational and Christian living together also rankles Gary Myers, v-p of Howard Publishing, whose Hugs line is clearly in the Inspirational category. To Myers, Inspirational is an important designation, even though Howard sometimes faces its share of challenges in determining how to categorize a particular title. Still, the line between Inspirational and Christian living is a fairly distinct one for them.
"Inspirational books get to the heart of the issue. Practical steps, what you'd find in Christian living, can follow, but the consumer today is saying, Give me a reason to live like this," Myers says. "That's what inspirational books do—they give people a reason to live like this."
All—or Nothing?
In one sense, of course, Christian publishers believe all their releases are inspirational. On the bookstore level, though, that kind of thinking just won't work, especially not at Davis-Kidd in Nashville, an independent store with a sizable religion section divided into nearly a dozen shelving categories. Christian section manager Katherine LeCroy has to continually remind her co-workers not to rely on the "Inspirational" designation on the back of a book when shelving it.
"I just don't think it's a very useful category," says LeCroy. "My frustration comes from publishers who use it so much that it's become a watered-down word. You see everything from prayer to fiction to books on liturgy and everything in between labeled as Inspiration. But what does that mean? The Bible can be construed as inspirational."
LeCroy's frustration, and that of other booksellers, is what keeps the proponents of BISAC and CPC pushing publishers to study the codes and strive to categorize titles as accurately, and narrowly, as possible. "Publishers need to use the BISAC subjects to convey downstream"—to the frontline staff helping the customer—"how the title ought to be categorized," Lotz says. Kelly Gallagher, ECPA v-p of marketing and technology, agrees. "As Christian product in the general trade continues to grow, it behooves the smart retailer to begin looking at a deeper level of classification—and not simply create a Christian Inspiration catchall."
