Monday, at Novel Rocket, I re-posted an article I’d written a while back on men and the Christian market. I asked Does the Christian Fiction Industry Know How to Market to Men? During the course of the discussion, I found myself coming back to the idea that the Christian publishing industry has a “moral obligation” to approach this issue differently. On Facebook, Mark Skillin responded:
A moral obligation? From the premise that fiction is art/entertainment, not sure moral obligation applies here. To market and promote a product into a new market seems like a marketing decision involving financial risk to the company that may or may not be wise.
He’s right about the financial risk involved in choosing to market to an unproven demographic. But how is this any different than any other publisher in the decision-making process? Where does the “Christian” part of being a “Christian publisher” come in? I responded:
Mark, the fact that we attach the term “Christian” to our fiction changes the debate. If this is a “Christian” industry, representing “Christian” stories, from “Christian” authors, marketed to “Christian” readers, then I think certain moral obligations DO apply. For one, Christian publishers have a moral obligation to be good stewards of their money. Which means making more of it. Obviously, marketing to women is smart business. But if the goal is not just to make money, but to get the message out there and/or provide alternative fare for Christian readers, then NOT marketing to men is problematic.Watching male readers and authors migrate elsewhere should trouble us… unless simply making money is our bottom line. But if that’s the case, then what makes the Christian industry “Christian”?
Most Christian publishers have a mission statement similar to this one from Harvest House:
“To glorify God by providing high-quality books and products that affirm biblical values, help people grow spiritually strong, and proclaim Jesus Christ as the answer to every human need.”
Tyndale House Publishers goes into more detail:
CORPORATE PURPOSE:
Minister to the spiritual needs of people, primarily through literature consistent with biblical principles.
CORE VALUES:
Dependent on God’s leading
Anchored in the Bible
Driven to make God’s Word accessible
Trustworthy
Committed to excellence
CORPORATE GOALS:
Honor God
Excel in business
Sustain controlled economic growth
Operate profitably
Help employees grow
Bethany House provides “inspiration and encouragement to readers through story and spiritual insight” and adds this interesting side-note:
We are also committed to taking Christian writing to the wider world.
Thomas Nelson, the big dog of Christian publishing, and Zondervan, was recently bought by HarperCollins. What does that do to TN’s Christian mission? Their new CEO assures us:
Our mission is simple: “Inspire the world by promoting Biblical principles and meeting the needs of people with resources that glorify Jesus Christ.”
“Inspire the world.” “Glorify God.” “Affirm biblical values.” “Help people grow spiritually.” These are the things we’d expect from a Christian publisher. But when we look at the shape of the Christian market, can we ascertain these Christian values?
Do the types of stories being published and the demographics of the Christian market reflect distinctly Christian values?
I’m not one of those who thinks making profit is a sin. Being a good steward is a very “Christian” thing to be. Some authors often rail, “It’s all about the money.” Well, is losing money “Christian”? Is making bad investments “Christian”? The Bible condemns greed, not profit. So I’d say Christian publishers are “morally obligated” to not only make wise business decisions, but to do so without being greedy.
It’s some of these other areas that I wonder about.
If Christian publishers are committed to, even morally obligated to, “Inspire the world,” “help people grow spiritually strong,” or take “Christian writing to the wider world,” then why is the Christian market so narrow? Why are minority groups so unrepresented? Why is Men’s fiction so scant? Why are 85% of the stories aimed at women? Where is the Gospel message being sown in stories other than Amish, Historical Romance, and General Women’s Fiction? If we are truly embracing different values and standards than secular publishers, how is that showing in our market?
Listen. If the goal of Christian publishers is to simply make money, they seem to be doing that by marketing mainly to conservative Christian women. Smart. But our vision is — or should be — much larger. Right?
I’d love to hear your thoughts…
Great points! Thanks for the article. More thougths I would love to see your views on: How should a Christian publisher treat his authors? Should integrity and honesty be characteristics a publisher uses in dealing with his authors?
This is truly thoughtful and challenging, Mike. It seems that the reading tastes of Christian women are largely bankrolling the Christian Publishing industry. It reminds me that Jesus’ ministry was supported by several women of means (Luke 8). I would imagine (being female myself) if these women who plunk down their dollars for Christian writing were asked if they were supportive of these same publishing houses exploring ways to reach the men in their lives with stories that were in line with Biblical truth, these women would not only be enthusiastic but they would pay to support it. Seems like a smart marketing strategy would be to market books to the women who buy books “for the men in your life” as a first line approach in order to gain and audience, even offering them as companion books to ones the women are reading as a package deal. I’m not a marketing mind at all but it seems that with the creativity of those who are, there’s a way to work with the established readership to expand to the men. Team with women readers who have more of a heart for the men in their world than the publisher can imagine to reach that under-served market.
“Why are minority groups so unrepresented? Why is Men’s fiction so scant? Why are 85% of the stories aimed at women? Where is the Gospel message being sown in stories other than Amish, Historical Romance, and General Women’s Fiction?”
Because it is about profit and the publishing houses are being disengenuous in their mission statements. No, profits aren’t wrong, but using “Christianity” to generate profits is. Which is why I stopped labeling myself a “Christian” author. That doesn’t mean my subject matter has to change, or become vile, or “wordly”, it just means I’m placing my writing in the category I feel it needs to go into: Work (not Missions). Let my entire life be my “mission” or “sermon”, not just what I write.
Thank you for writing this. You make such good points.
How about Christian agents? Love to hear something about that. Recently I attended a Christian Writers Conference. We were given fifteen minutes to present our work “pitch” to the agents and publishing houses. My first appointment was horrible. The agent was five minutes late and made no apology for it. And, through the whole appointment was interested in looking around with very little eye contact. She finally looked at my material and said it was well written but not what they published and discouraged me from going to Christian publications. She said the supernatural would do better in the secular world. So instead of feeling uplifted…. I heard other stories like this from other writers. The good news is that one of the publishers at the conference wants to see my manuscript when finished and seemed very interested. But why can’t agents and publishers behave in a Christian fashion? Why are there so many stories like mine? Frustrated.
I had the something similar happen in one appointment after a string of great ones. The agent was sneaking glances at *my* watch every twenty seconds. We were both tired after the three-day marathon, and none of our tastes were a click and we both knew it very quickly. We discussed every genre from speculative to literary. No go. I really like her to talk to, but I doubt we’d work well together.
On the other hand, I had a very different appointment with someone else, where the time flew by and we weren’t really done talking. I’ll definitely query him in the future if I decide to look for representation.
It’s always a two-way interview. If they don’t suit you, you move on to the next round. You’re not the supplicant, you’re the prospective partner, same as the agent. The majority of instances are not going to result in that long-term “yes, I want to work closely with this person” vibe. God uses that to direct our paths. Hang in there…your path will show itself in the acceptable time.
Yes, thank you for the encouragement. After a while I can reason it out. God is in control. The open doors if they’re to open come from Him. But my flesh gets on steroids when I encounter such sloppy agape. Or should I say, No agape at all. After that appointment I watched us at the lines getting ready to enter “the room,” where the interviews were held. I pictured us as Henry the VIII’s wives ready for the block! It took prayer and a few more interviews to flake off that mood. Thanks again. A.
While I don’t think there’s anything innately wrong with targeting those white, conservative females, I do agree with you that there’s a disconnect between the professed mission statements and what they actually publish. That disconnect should be fixed—either by broadening what they accept, or by revising the mission statements.
That’s one reason I respect Marcher Lord Press and Astraea Press. Both publishers do have limitations on what content they’ll take—but those limitations are in line with how they describe themselves.
This isn’t a problem just in Christian fiction. It’s prevalent in YA as well. One of the biggest complaints among YA readers is a lack of boy protagonists. (I think you may have even blogged about that at one point…)
This is what I see: publishers tend to go for the “majority market” with almost every book. It ends up skewing things. so 85% of books are aimed at 60% of readers. Each book publication decision is based on trying to serve the majority, and the minority gets squeezed out.
Do Christians have an obligation to change this? I’m not sure. I think the problem is less that they don’t want to take any chances on the minority genres (like fantasy and sci-fi and other things that appeal to male readers–and *female* readers that don’t like romance!) but rather that *they don’t know how* without getting out of strictly CBA-stock stories.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again–my writing has been turned down by Christian agents because the Christianity wasn’t overt. And, once published, I lost out on an award for the same reason. I think books aimed at men and non-mainstream genres tend to push the limits of what the CBA wants to produce. They are trying to stick to those claims that their writing “glorifies God” or “affirms biblical values”. I know my books will never sell to a Christian publisher–because my characters sneak around and lie and use magic. Even the adult novel I’m writing won’t work in the CBA–it’s overt, but the way I portray angels and demons won’t fly with them, I guarantee. When you put limits like that on fiction, then you limit it to certain types of stories–and I think overall those types of stories don’t appeal to men (or, again, women like me :P).
The irony, of course, is that all my writer friends and small-publishing connections are in the Christian market. Most of the people I’ve met, either in person or online, are true Christians, wanting to help each other and make the Christian fiction market better. But the few times I approached editors or agents at the conferences I attended…I was met with either coldness or “this is great but we don’t take this genre.”
“*they don’t know how* without getting out of strictly CBA-stock stories.”
Yeah, from following the publishing evolution discussion, I tend to think that discoverability is the big deal there. Publishers are not so good at that because they’ve traditionally relied on distributor and retailer middlemen to do it for them, and their part has been limited to a stock set of tricks like paying a storefront display premium. Online doesn’t work as effectively as in-store (yet), but stores stock only the very few top sellers on the long-tail sales curve. There’s little to no space for debuts, subgenres, or new demographic development there.
With MLP, Jeff developed a discoverability mechanism before he launched his company–a highly vocal core fan base on the WTME forum. He also uses controversy to force discovery among people who otherwise wouldn’t care about Christian SF. But these are manual discovery mechanisms, digital parallels to physical store browsing, not algorithmic ones like Amazon’s “also viewed” and “also bought.” Right now, it’s all Godin Tribes and 1,000 True Fans, and that’s very time-consuming and narrow-channel stuff.
“I think overall those types of stories don’t appeal to men (or, again, women like me).”
Likewise…I know a lot of our kind of women. Like the men, we/they tend to resort to ABA reading.
C. L. I’m not sure I agree. Publishers have been pretty quick to get newsletters out to whoever wants to sign up. I’ve seen debut authors featured, even speculative ones. I kind of think some of this is readers “walking” into the publisheder’s store. It’s hard to market to The Public at large–considerably easier to do so to those who say, I’d like to see what you’ve got.
Becky
“…considerably easier to do so to those who say, I’d like to see what you’ve got.”
Agreed. But one problem with things like newsletters is that the online discovery process is fragmented. Personally, I don’t want thirteen newsletters to cover the new releases from the various imprints I might be interested in. I’m sure I’m missing out on many things, but the online overload I get from multiple channels is overwhelming. I tune most of them out.
Perhaps it’s best to say discoverability is in transition, as is everything in books.
“I’ve seen debut authors featured, even speculative ones.”
Which is a better scenario than what I was referring to with physical shelf space, for sure.
We could tackle the premise that is it smart to only market to certain Christian white women? Is that really “good” business? To stay with what’s safe and potentially eliminate the risk of true marketing to the other venues you listed? I wonder. It’s been said by multiple professionals that the economy has resulted in the pulling back of publishers in the Christian industry to that which is safe (also what you listed as their prominent sales) and to cut back on new authors who might write outside the chosen demographic.
If, as you say, the message is equally important in their mission statements, then reducing their reach to the tried (and tired) and true genres takes away the “mission” part of their objectives and keeps feeding one aspect of the market, making them solely dependent on those faithful readers.
We all know the marvelous and different exceptions to the general rule you speak of, Mike, including your own work, but more and more some of these authors aren’t being offered new contracts – nor is their work being effectively marketed when it’s introduced. Some of these appeal slightly more to the male market. I don’t think CBA publishers have effectively marketed much fiction at all. It’s relatively easy to market Karen Kingsbury and Ted Dekker because they’ve already established and captured their markets. All a publisher has to do is announce a new release, make a little fanfare, offer free books or an IPad, and sales soar.
I think the “vision” is stunted or has been basically attained, and what they’re concerned about now is holding steady – which can result in stagnation and genuine loss of talented writers migrating away from CBA publishers out of frustration or necessity.
Though I agree that Christian businesses do have certain moral obligations, I am not sure I agree that there is a moral obligation to market to a certain demographic. Aside from base moral obligations of the faith, living up to or failing to meet some moral obligations is often determined in comparison to stated intentions. A publisher interested in and successfully marketing to a niche is not necessarily failing a moral obligation unless they claim to intend otherwise. Also, good stewardship of money does not necessarily require earning more money, not to mention that “more” is subjective. It also has to do with the level of benefit it brings in comparison to the investment. Some investments yield no financial gain whatsoever, but are investments in people, places and things that produce non-monetary but hopefully eternal value.
Another issue to consider is that while we may rightfully argue that industry marketing is too narrow, should we be more concerned about the industry’s growing habit of improperly labelling works “Christian” when they have little correlation to the faith, much less accurate portrayal of even core tenets of the Truth? It seems that the current mindset behind applying the Christian label in marketing needs some addressing, which will in turn affect the demographic they target. More accurately, and possibly more narrowly, defining the description may serve everyone better.
I think one reason bonnet books are popular is because some women who read them (I’m thinking of my mother-in-law) think they are realistic/historical and there for “safe” (which I think means not challenging the reader’s conventional/conservative worldview).
But (and the rest is from my current blog post on this related issue): “Fiction isn’t safe. It’s not supposed to be, it’s an art form and by its nature subversive.
“Subversive in that the purpose of art (and therefore fiction – in my opinion, I’m not an art major or philosopher, just a guy who sometimes sputters around his blog and collection of WIP word docs) is to engage the reader at a level that subverts our often cautious and critical intellectual barriers. Barriers that sometimes blind us to truth and new perspectives.
“For the rut-riders (whether liberal or conservative) art can be uncomfortable. Dangerous even. And if fiction is suspect, then speculative fiction even more so. Speculative writing (science fiction, fantasy, etc.), by definition, broadens the boundaries of what is/can be and therefore is not safe for the casual reader.”
(Back to my comment here): So in response to your question, maybe marketing to men isn’t safe.
I’m not sure it’s safe to ignore them unless they fit into a specific niche, either. Christian fiction refreshes, supports, and consoles believers at many points in their life. I know it helped me when I was a young believer, and to be able to read the genres I liked but written from a Christian perspective was such a blessing. When you say “it isn’t worth our time to pursue you,” it sends more of a message than you intend.
One phrase that struck me is from an article about the book Sleeping Giant: No move of God without men of God. It says that men are orphaned into the secular culture, and seek to find validation in it by becoming sons of pop culture. We have to connect and belong to something tangible, and we’re kind of letting the world take over because of unwillingness to risk.