Back in 1984, Sandra Felton was a self-described "messie": a disorganized mom who couldn't keep track of her kids, her house, her finances, her life. Now she is an author-guru riding the nation's home organization wave, having sold more than 700,000 books with Revell—including her now-classic original guide, The Messies Manual, which has never been out of print.
Felton's in good company: according to one study, sales of home organization products (including shelving and baskets as well as books and DVDs) are swelling more than 5% annually. Fast-growing chains like the Container Store are popping up across the country, and specialized storage companies like Garage Tek and California Closets promise to help people contain and arrange their piles o' stuff. On television, cable shows like Clean Sweep and Mission: Organization help families make the journey from clutter to serenity, one room at a time.
The organizational surge includes books, and the Christian market is no exception, though the manuals from Christian houses are often indistinguishable from their general market counterparts. Yes, there are Bible quotes sprinkled throughout (Proverbs 31 is a perennial favorite) and a few musings on emulating God by bringing order from chaos. But for the most part, these books are concrete how-tos on improving earthly homes, not ethereal musings on attaining future heavenly ones.
Homebodies on the Move
Why the trend? "We're all so busy," explains Kathy Peel, who has done home/life makeover shows on Oprah and HGTV and sold more than two million copies of her 19 books. Readers of home organization books—most of whom, says Peel, are active women ages 26 to 44—need concrete help in sifting through the clutter of their lives and finding what is really important. "Many of the women in my target audience are Generation X parents, who are raising kids and are very busy. They are serious about family management. Many of them came from boomer households that had disintegrated, so they're really trying to do it right, making it a priority to make their home a good place to be."
Peel's most recent book, Desperate Households: How to Restore Order and Harmony to Your Life and Home (Tyndale, July) kicks off a new era for home organization books in the Christian market: it launches Tyndale's new imprint for family management, Picket Fence Press. Its seven core publishing areas will include home and property; food and meals; family and friends; finances; special events such as holidays and parties; time management and scheduling; and self-care. Jan Long Harris, associate publisher for books at Tyndale, says the imprint will produce three or four books a year, beginning in earnest in 2008. Some of the books will be Peel's, with others by emerging authors who already have home management platforms.
Other publishers aren't yet going the imprint route, but they have identified home organization as a growing category. In September, Thomas Nelson will release Marcia Ramsland's Simplify Your Space: Create Order and Reduce Stress, the third in her Organizing for Success series (see InProfile, p. S15). According to acquisitions editor Debbie Wickwire, the first two books in the series (Simplify Your Life and Simplify Your Space) sold more than 65,000 copies combined. In keeping with the target audience, Nelson has marketed the books as part of its popular Women of Faith brand. Wickwire also says that Ramsland is an "incredible promoter" of her books through her speaking, monthly newsletter and Web site (organizingpro.com).
At Oregon-based Harvest House, professional organizer Vicki Norris (a recognizable face to fans of HGTV's Mission: Organization) has the forthcoming book Restoring Order to Your Home (Jan.) and the repackaged title Reclaim Your Life... and Get Organized for Good (July; previously published in 2006 as Restoring Order). Norris, says print publicist Dave Bartlett, is featured in the August issue of Real Simple magazine and is a contributor to the women-oriented Web site iVillage. Harvest House is growing a veritable "cottage" industry with the addition to its frontlist of authors Mindy Starns Clark (The House That Cleans Itself, June) and Karen Ehman (The Complete Guide to Getting and Staying Organized, Jan. 2008).
Other houses are testing the home organization waters with single titles: Crossway has Shopping for Time: How to Do It All and Not Be Overwhelmed, a four-author book on time management that released in July. Standard Publishing has From Clutter to Clarity: Simplifying Life from the Inside Out, an October release by Nancy Twigg. And Ginger Plowman's Heaven at Home: Establishing and Enjoying a Peaceful Home released in June from Shepherd Press.
Divine Design
Not surprisingly, attracting busy readers to home organization books requires careful attention to how the book looks as well as to how it reads. Covers are especially important, says Lonnie Hull DuPont, director of acquisitions for Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group. As Sandra Felton's longtime publisher, Revell has sometimes repackaged Felton's books in trade paper or mass market, and DuPont says that with each redesign there's been a spike in sales. "We want to give them an updated, Martha Stewartish look," DuPont explains. "The old cartoon covers really seemed outdated, and they presented an image that we thought was incorrect for what Sandra does. There was a time when a lot of the women's books in our market had cartoon characters—I don't even want to speculate on what that means. Now, rather than appeal to readers' sense of humor, we want to appeal to their aesthetic."
DuPont also stresses the importance of interior decorating—of the book, that is. "At Baker we've been doing a lot more design inside of books in the last few years. Ever since we became a leader in Christian youth books and we discovered that page design is everything, we started transferring that to our adult books, knowing that there is a whole new generation of people who read sidebars more than the actual text." That philosophy is evident in the design of Organizing Magic: 40 Days to a Well-Ordered Home and Life, Felton's 2006 book with Revell; it features bulleted lists, pink graphic elements and vivid subheads. "I think we managed to create a two-color design that is friendly and appealing to women," says DuPont.
Tyndale's Harris agrees with this philosophy. "It is particularly true for these books that if the interior design is cluttered, it would argue against the very purpose of the book," she says. "We want to make the books very inviting: open design, color where possible, shorter blocks of text and all the different graphic elements that break up text and help the readers find what they want."
