This morning, I read with interest an article entitled Who killed the contemporary Christian music industry? over at The Week. I’m usually pretty skeptical of such pieces. The Christian music biz is an easy target for haters of the evangelical brand. Which often guarantees that articles like the one above will be little more than hit pieces. Surprisingly, I didn’t get that vibe from Tyler Huckabee’s post. In fact, it touched on a dynamic that, I believe, is very much at work in the Christian publishing industry.
Huckabee’s thesis is fleshed out in dcTalk, “unquestionably the decade’s [1990’s] greatest CCM (Contemporary Christian Music) success story.” The multi-platinum group regularly crossed over into mainstream venues like MTV and the Billboard charts. This success was, like much success, a perfect storm of factors. Not only was American culture less secular (meaning that songs about Jesus did not evoke immediate kneejerk negativity), but the band was able to adapt to the then-contemporary musical trends (see: grunge / rap / rock) while probing social and religious issues with “a daring edge.”
So where did it go wrong? dcTalk singer / songwriter Kevin Max framed it in terms of a withdrawal from, and failure to engage, the mainstream market.
“We were reaching out,” Max says. “We were trying to communicate to the non-believer as much as we were communicating to the believer. Today, when I listen to Christian radio and see the festivals and see what’s happening in the church, I don’t see a whole lot of that interactivity. Where I’m at right now, it’s almost like the doors have shut on the experimenting with lyrics and images and ideas to get people interactive.” (bold mine)
As the music industry began to change due to digital market and the empowerment of indies (changes that have also affected the publishing industry), Christian labels were forced to play it safe and take less risks. As songwriter / producer Matt Bronleewe put it,
“There’s not much room to fail anymore,” he explains. “And failure’s such a creative gift. When the ability to fail is taken away, it fuels a lot of fear. It narrows the pool of producers and writers to such a degree that there’s a sameness that starts to occur.”
But for an industry seeking to survive, “sameness” can be a godsend. Especially when there’s a market for it. For the Christian music industry, this “sameness” came in the form of worship music.
The CCM industry began relying on sure bets, and the surest bet of all was what’s broadly known as “worship music” — songs people sing at church. Initially fueled by musicians like Chris Tomlin and Sonic Flood, worship has since become CCM’s primary export — a fact worship-focused bands like Hillsong United have leveraged into playing stadiums around the world.
While this shift has indeed kept the Christian music industry afloat, it has relinquished a hugely important (dare I say, even biblical) obligation — to crossover and engage mainstream culture.
…whatever CCM might have gained in throwing its fortunes in with worship music, it largely lost in its ability to sneak into the Top 40 or the occasional Now That’s What I Call Music! compilation.
For the most part, CCM artists have been content to either play it safe and hold onto their dwindling cut of America’s attention span, or strike out on their own and look for other outcasts.
The parallels with the Christian publishing industry are pretty obvious. Like CCM, the recession and the digital marketplace has forced publishers to “play it safe.” The result is a reliance on “sameness” and “sure bets.” In the case of CCM, that meant worship music. In the case of Christian fiction, that means women’s fiction. Which is why, the last 7-8 years has seen Christian publishers taking less risks and concentrating on what has always worked.
Women’s fiction is the life preserver that Christian fiction publishers have clung to.
From a business perspective, this seems like the smart thing to do. However, this approach — like CCM’s “throwing its fortunes in with worship music” — is not without consequence. I recently had some private correspondence with a Christian reviewer and reader who expressed a growing alienation with the Christian fiction industry. According to him, not only are Christian publishers virtually ignoring speculative fiction titles (which comprise a fairly small segment of the overall evangelical fiction market), but the industry has banked so solidly on conservative female readership that male readers are forced to migrate elsewhere. This, among other things, has also cost us an ability to be “interactive,” as Kevin Max put it, with mainstream culture.
Of course, it could be argued that the Christian music or publishing industry has no compelling requirement to target outsiders. It is made and marketed for the choir. In the case of Christian fiction, the choir consists mostly of conservative white females. To be fair, Christian publishers appear to be slowly developing more mainstream labels in an attempt to be more “interactive” with culture. Nevertheless, it is worth asking whether or not playing it safe will have more long-term implications for the Christian fiction industry. Tyler Huckabee considers such an approach to have “killed” the Christian music industry. Pursuing “sameness” and narrowing the margin of risk kept the industry afloat, but also left it bereft of any larger cultural influence outside its own circle. Likewise, a similar question could be asked of the publishing industry: Is “playing it safe” killing Christian fiction? Its target readership will undoubtedly say “no.” But if the contemporary Christian music industry is any evidence, we might want to think twice.
That’s a good point about worship music. Michael W. Smith is a living example of that trend. His early CCM days were standard pop, and he was probably #2 to Amy Grant’s #1 as CCM star of radio. So many graduations had his song Friends play. He had some crossover success with Go West Young Man, as it got secular airtime for its slow songs. But then after that he went 100% worship. I didn’t find it odd, because back then Petra had just made a great rock-inspired worship album, but in hindsight he probably was demonstrating the trend you speak of.
I’m not sure DC Talk is the best example of engaging the market. Jesus Freak was pure CCM, and it only got airplay due to Just Between You and Me. But that song only engaged Christianity in the bridge section, and the radio edit cut that out! It wound up being an example of Stealth Jesus, though probably not by design.
Probably the best true Christian crossover success was entirely unexpected. Bob Carlisle, who before was front man for the CCM rock band Allies, managed to utterly destroy the charts with Butterfly Kisses. Both pop and country versions, and it’s openly Christian. I don’t think any Christian artist has had that level of success. It’s a little sad, because his sound with Allies is night and day to his Butterfly Kisses days-BK is kind of like The Christmas Shoes, where Allies did great rock songs. Check out “The Voice of the Spirit.” It’s straightforwards, but man Bob has a great voice.
I think Alison Krauss is another crossover artist. Not many people realize before her Union Station days she used to tour with Margaret Becker on the CCM circuit. Bluegrass is probably more forgiving of faith than other genres, I guess.
I don’t think these trends will kill the Christian fiction industry. However, they may damage or kill the Christian publishing industry, as authors (like yourself) choose to self-publish novels that step outside the Christian fiction norms. The challenge is for those authors to attract a readership when they don’t have the marketing push from the big-name publisher. It’s difficult, but not impossible.
You also comment about novels “preaching to the choir”, and you’re correct with this. However, I’m also observing another trend: Christian publishers moving into “clean fiction” (romance with no sexual content, but also little or nothing in the way of Christian content). This risks alienating the traditional Christian fiction reader–you’ve posted before about a review that criticised a ‘Christian’ novel for having little or no Christian content–but I’m not convinced non-Christians will pick up a book from a Christian publisher, no matter how unreligious the content is.
By the way, if you’re looking for books that step outside the Christian norm, I’d suggest Feast for Thieves by Marcus Brotherton or Thief of Glory by Sigmund Brouwer. Supporting books like these might send the message to publishers that readers don’t want same-old same-old. I, for one, am fed up with picking up a new release and finding it very much like the last five books I’ve read in terms of plot, voice, characters etc.
Bravo. “Supporting books like these might send the message to publishers that readers don’t want same-old same-old. I, for one, am fed up with picking up a new release and finding it very much like the last five books I’ve read in terms of plot, voice, characters etc.” This is because, even and I daresay especially in the speculative fiction Christian world, everything is written according to the same so-called “rules” which result in every story sounding just like the one that came before it in terms of presentation. I am loath to honor this phenomenon by calling it a “style.” They all read the same way, as if they might have all come, by and large, from the same “invisible author” following the “rules.” No head-hopping, no third person omniscient, no adverbs, no verb in dialogue save “said” and “asked,” no “was plus -ing because that’s passive [it is not and anyone who understands language at all knows this] and we don’t do passives,” “he said with a laugh” is platinum, but “he laughed” is excrement, ad infinitum et nauseam. There was a time when you could pick up an author — Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock, ERB, John Jakes, Heinlein, Asimov, Tolkien, Michael Crichton, Robert McCammon — and get lost not merely in the depth of a story well-told but revel in the actual words these authors used to tell their tales, as different from one another as personalities differ in people. But now you get exactly what you describe, a tired old sameness following the “rules.” I am currently reading a horror novel published [and not a self-pub] in 2014, mind you, written by a successful multi-book author whose initials are NOT S.K., and this writer smashes every rule I have listed above. I do not think he is a Christian. Perhaps this obsession with sameness is a malady afflicting only the Christian writing community. God help us, and thank you for your insight!
Little know fact, the Horror Genre was considered mainly for the women in the 19th Century.
I think there is a market for moral focussed content that does not have a specific religious slant. People from many faiths and philosophies believe in living a moral life, or want age appropriate things to watch. I do not have a specific religion I follow but do not like to watch swearing on TV or have to always have to have a sex scene in every fictional book or movie I enjoy.
I’m curious about the phrase “killing Christian fiction”. By what measurement would we consider Christian fiction “dead”?
Are we talking about the liveliness of diverse and original story content? The numbers of books out under that title? Or about numbers and bottom lines and whether or not companies that exist to traffic in Christian fiction are growing or shutting down?
I know you discussed this a bit, but it sticks with me, this question of “What/who is Christian fiction for?” Is it simply entertainment for Christians? Or is it fiction with a Christian worldview that crosses over into the wider world and stirs the hearts of everyone who reads it?
As Christian authors (I believe) we ought to ask ourselves these questions and to come to an understanding of what we believe our role to be. Am I to write for the choir, as it were? Or are my stories to touch the world? Perhaps some of us are given the ideas and skill to do both and some are geared to a very specific audience. Each of us should know what it is we are doing and do it mindfully.
Regardless of the life or death of the Christian fiction industry, the technology is now available for the creation and publication of all forms of fiction. We don’t need to be swayed one way or the other by the fate of the overall industry. But I do think we should open our eyes to it and be wise about our choices. Don’t just assume there’s a place for what you create within the borders of the CBA. And if they reject your work, don’t assume that there’s no place for you at all.
Great points on the parallels drawn between Christian fiction and the Christian music industry. I’ve found it quite helpful to examine what’s happening there and get ideas for ways to approach things in publishing.
Teddi, I used the word “killing” to play off the initial article, “Who KILLED the contemporary Christian music industry?” In reality, neither CCM or Christian fiction are “dying” any time soon. What I’m equating with “death” (like Huckabee does in his article) is the genre’s withdrawal from mainstream America into an artistic ghetto aimed exclusively at the committed.
CCM has always been mostly horrible. But you find great musicians like Project86, Demon Hunter, Lecrae, Trip Lee, Flyleaf, Wavorly, etc. They broke through barriers. That in mind, I wonder what holds the rest of the Christian Entertainment industry back. . .our movies tend to stink, and it’s difficult to find a good book. I’m not sure I can blame that strictly on the industry, though. It seems the artists themselves are afraid to take risks. Lecrae started his own label. So did many of the bands I listed above. And they release good stuff, so they get a return. . .I wonder why this trend isn’t catching as well in other mediums. . .
Funny you should say that. It’s much, much easier to find a good ‘Christian’ book, as a opposed to a good Christian movie.
I wish you were wrong. But I don’t think you are. My Christian fantasy was turned down for not meeting “acceptable content guidelines”. I didn’t ask. Was it the pagans not acting like sanctified Christians? The child I put in danger? Fortunately I did find a publisher in the end. I have tried very hard to write openly Christian that non-Christians would genuinely enjoy. I hope I’ve succeeded. I’ve got at least one non-Christian author reading it with an eye to an endorsement and we are approaching mainstream reviewers. I have spent significant time and energy building up a very broad-based network on social media with an eye to reaching outside the narrow demographics of the CBA. I would be thrilled to pieces if I succeeded.
Also, there’s the problem of sterilisation within the fiction itself. I recently wrote a work of Christian women’s fiction which I thought would tick a lot of the ‘safe’ boxes around, but obviously it didn’t tick enough of them. I had a scene where a Christian got drunk (yes, it was her choice to do so) and even though it was clear she regretted it later, it was too ‘unsafe’ for some Christian publishers. Christians in fiction, it seems, must never be seen to act in a way that deviates from conservative Christian standards. Since when have we Christians ever been as squeaky clean as that?
Mike, The other day I read this: http://www.wnd.com/2015/06/christian-booksellers-implosion/ and it got me thinking that maybe “Christian” fiction ought to die.
I don’t know the gentleman who wrote the article, and I’m not sure how solid his research is, but I do believe the so-called Christian publishers are run by non-Christian, profit-based companies. How can good fiction reflective of the Christian worldview flourish in such an environment? There’s a major conflict of interest at best. At worst, it’s akin to the money changers in the temple, and we know how Jesus felt about those.
I so so want to embark on a fictionalised work and have believe it or not only ever read one ” Christian” novel which was ” Piercing the darkness” . I am not sure what the guidelines would be as a writer but I guess I can guess. Wondering if I should read whats currently on the market or not. Or maybe just wade out into the depths anyway?