For publishers of religion books, the traditional thinking goes: find a way out of bookstores' so-called "religion ghetto" and watch your sales take off. If you're really lucky, you may get the best of both worlds: double-shelving.
But traditional thinking can be dead wrong.
There was a time when the religion category didn't have the pull of counterparts such as Parenting or Psychology or Business. Books on the religion shelf sank into a chasm of indifference. However, the religion book market boom over the past several years has turned that chasm into a valley of profitability for many publishers, who claim staunchly that religion/spirituality is the best fit for their books after all.
"The religion area of the general trade store is, in fact, the best place for Zondervan titles," Cris Doornbos, vice-president of sales for Zondervan, told PW. "We've experimented in the past by putting selected titles into psychology or fiction, only to find that that same title sells better in the religion/Christian section of the store. Consumers are looking to the religion category for a variety of subjects, from self-help to fiction." Jeff Hobbs, sales director at Harper San Francisco, echoed Doornbos's sentiments. "In most large bookstores, as well as at the chains, being in the religion section is not a negative thing," Hobbs said. "These are well-maintained and thoughtfully bought sections."
When HSF has high-profile authors such as Robert Schuller (My Journey) and John Shelby Spong (A New Christianity for a New World), Hobbs said, and couples them with a focused marketing campaign, the publisher is able to secure large buy-ins and in-store promotional space. No publisher can hope for more than that—regardless of where the book gets shelved.
With the exception of blockbusters, most books find a home in only one section of bookstores, especially in the chains. The occasional independent bookstore that double-shelves is a bookselling phenomenon, but apparently a rare one. Mary Ellen Keating, spokesperson for Barnes & Noble, told PW that, for inventory purposes, the chain does not shelve books in more than one category. However, it routinely promotes books in the new release section and features key titles on tables and bestseller groupings throughout the store.
Meanwhile, sometimes a large indie makes good use of the double-shelving philosophy. One such store is Chaucer's of Santa Barbara, Calif., which uses Wordstock inventory software, a system that—unlike some others—allows for two section codes rather than only one. "Something like The Hobbit could be coded for adult sci-fi and children's, which makes sense," buyer Diann Sullivan said. "In religion, generally we don't put titles in two categories. If a book is religious-oriented, then that's how we position it. But if a book runs along general topics, and just happens to have a religious viewpoint, then it would be shelved broadly. We try to stay true to what its core message is."
One clear exception, Sullivan said, is a book like The Prayer of Jabez by Bruce Wilkinson (Multnomah). Chaucer's shelves the phenomenal religion bestseller in both the religion and inspirational gifts sections, as well as giving it prime real estate on a bestseller table up front.
"Basically, you're dealing with two issues," Deborah Farrington, editorial director of Morehouse Publishing, said. "Do you put the book where someone who's browsing can find it? Or do you put it where clerks can find it? I don't know of bookstores or chains that cross-merchandise, especially in chains, because you're dealing with clerks who don't know the books very well. In the old days, when you had a guy in the neighborhood owning a store, this wasn't a problem."
A former bookseller at Graduate Theological Union Bookstore in Berkeley, Calif., Farrington said she came up against the issue of where to shelve books frequently. "At GTU we had a big problem with books by feminist theologians," Farrington said. "Do you put them in women's studies, in theology or in New Testament? Customers looking for those titles would go to women's studies, but if you put all the women's stuff there you ghettoize the women, and the rest of the store becomes a white male domain."
Although a book's final shelving place is up to the bookseller, marketing managers and publishers find ways to steer key titles in the directions they target. As Mark Kerr, sales and marketing manager for Jossey-Bass, discovered, sometimes it's a simple matter of semantics. And sometimes those books do fare better out of the religion waters. "If it's a book I really want to cross over to the secular section of the store, such as business management rather than Christian business, I create marketing material to reflect that," Kerr said. "Say I've got an author who's well-known in both the Christian world and the psychology world. They may be featured on [James Dobson's] Focus on the Family program all the time, but they also have a name in the regular counseling world. When I target them to Borders and Barnes & Noble, I just give their secular credentials. But when I create my profile for the Christian bookstores, I emphasize their religious credentials."
Out of the 35 to 40 religion titles Jossey-Bass publishes each year, Kerr said he typically steers five to 10 toward other sections of the bookstore. But this type of marketing navigation comes with a caveat. "You can do all the finessing you want, but unless it makes sense to the account, they're going to put the book where they want it anyway," Kerr said. "If it doesn't make sense, you're only going to shoot yourself in the foot."
Kerr employed his marketing savvy on an October title (Church on Sunday, Work on Monday: The Challenge of Fusing Christian Values with Business Life by Laura Nash and Scotty McLennan) he targeted to the general business section of bookstores, rather than religion. The sell-in figures exceeded sales expectations. "The book had two strikes against it right up front," Kerr said. "It had the word Christian in it, and the very first word in the title is Church. I thought, Here's a book that's going to get pigeonholed." To lend business credibility to the book, Kerr got a foreword by Ken Blanchard, author of The One-Minute Manager, a name the chains would recognize as a business author. He created marketing material to reflect the book's business value and had his sales team present it as a business title.
"It's not on shelves yet, but I have all the buys from the chains," Kerr said. "At Barnes & Noble and Borders, we had a 50% better sell-in than I thought we would. Absolutely, those sales would not have happened if I hadn't taken the trouble up front."
Farrington saw similar success at Morehouse with a title she believes would otherwise have been buried in the religion section. The book, Gifted by Otherness by L. William Countryman (Aug.), deals with homosexuality in the church. "Rather than present it to the religion buyer at Borders, my sales rep presented it to the gay/lesbian buyer, and they bought a large quantity—way more than the religion buyer would have bought," Farrington said. "The book will get much better exposure in the gay/lesbian section than it would have in religion."
Morehouse is also distributing a new Gracewing title, based on the poetry of Therese of Lisieux, that the sales rep pitched to Barnes & Noble's poetry buyer rather than the religion buyer. "They bought a good quantity," Farrington said. "They might not have even picked it up in religion."
Doornbos tells a story that illustrates the opposite can also be true. One of Zondervan's bestselling titles in the ABA channel is Boundaries by John Townsend and Henry Cloud. "Shortly after the book's introduction, we realized it was selling very well and thought it would sell better if we could take it out of the religious section and place it in the psychology section," Doornbos said. "What we found was that the book sold better in the religious category than it did in the psychology category. So we placed it back in the religion category."
Doornbos said he would not advocate more cross-merchandising as much as better categorization within the religion section. Customers look to the religion category for a wide range of topics. Yet when they come to the section, there are few, if any, sub-categories to choose from, he said.
"The way it works now can be confusing to consumers because we see Christianity, Inspiration, Inspirational Fiction and other categories that consumers just don't understand," Doornbos said. "I would like to see general trade retailers, chains and major independents use the new Christian product categories as developed by a subgroup of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association as a way of developing categories within a Christianity section."
In addition to eight major book categories—Bible Studies, Christian Living, Church & Ministry, Fiction, General Interest, Inspiration, Theology/ Doctrine and Youth/ Children—ECPA has developed a list of nonsubject categories. These include Bibles, Software, Giftware and Curriculum.
Mike Morrison, national accounts manager at Tyndale, publisher of the megaselling Left Behind series, recalls when the idea to cross-merchandise key product originated with a large chain retailer, not Tyndale's sales staff. When Left Behind first debuted, the chain was willing to feature it outside the religion section, but wanted to charge Tyndale extra money to put the book on an endcap, or book table, or at the cash register. "We told them we would not be able to do that," Morrison said. "If they did feature the product, it should be because it deserved to be there—it earned its keep—not because we paid for it. We treat all our customers the same." The series picked up steam, baffling the publishing world with its unexpected blockbuster status.
"By about book four, the chain decided they would go ahead and put the product in a featured section. As soon as they did, the sales quickly more than doubled," Morrison said. Since then, the chain retailer has featured Left Behind titles in multiple locations and even created a 10-foot-long table devoted exclusively to the series. "Now, with that history, we can go back and tell them to reconsider placement for other books. They did that with the Left Behind Kids Series—it went in both the kids' section and with the adult Left Behind books on endcaps. The bottom line is, a book has to earn its space. If it's hot enough, it needs extra floor space."
Like Doornbos and Hobbs, however, Morrison believes the religion section is often the best place for Tyndale titles. "There's a Christian distinctive to what we publish," Morrison said. "Our corporate mission states that. We're not hiding that; as a matter of fact, we're trumpeting it. Any of our products that work in the secular marketplace work because they have a message that's meeting the needs of people. We've had tremendous success in the ABA, but that's because the message is there loud and clear."
At Doubleday, books by bestselling authors such as T.D. Jakes certainly earn their keep in stores' limited floor space. According to Joel Fotinos, director of religious publishing, the author often gets shelved in three sections: women's, African-American and religion. And Jakes's latest two titles, Maximize the Moment and The Great Investment, make nice fits in the business section as well.
"From my days as the religion/philosophy buyer at Tattered Cover [in Denver], I know how difficult it is to have books in more than one section, for logistical reasons," Fotinos told PW. "If it sells out of one section and not the other, and you only had one copy in each, you might have it listed on the screen, but it's more difficult for people to find the book in the second section. Also, it's a little less potent to have one book in two sections rather than two copies in one section."
Fotinos said some books are obvious candidates for sections other than religion, such as The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron (1992), which has sold more than two million copies. "That book is shelved in self-help/psychology in nearly every bookstore in the country because it's a book about creativity that brings in the spiritual element," Fotinos said. Likewise, Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer sometimes gets shelved in the travel section, he pointed out.
But overall Fotinos takes a philosophical view on the subject of where to shelve religion books. "My experience, my belief now, is that God has invaded every section of the bookstore," he said. "If you go into the business section, there are books on spirituality and business. If you go into health, there are books on spirituality and health. There's even gardening as a spiritual endeavor. I can't think of a section that doesn't have spiritual books. God is all over the bookstore right now."
