4 responses

1. 

   Simon Boswell

   28 December 2007

   Hi there Phil. Interesting thoughts about the tension between the commercial need to sell more and the moral desire to buy less! I work in marketing where we come across this all the time.

   I’d make the following points:
   – it is essentially a good thing that you are making Christian literature available. Without visibility, people do not know its there.
   – It is not wrong to encourage people to buy more of the right stuff; feeding the mind can help people to better understand their world and hence their other purchasing habits better.
   – A good retailer that happens to be Christian in its ethos is much better than a poor retailer that is specifically ‘Christian’.
   – Know your tribe: if you are selling to a Christian audience then personally I would make more of the local church networks and arrange local events and book clubs to sell to. A shop is a very expensive overhead to sustain when you have other ways of reaching your target audience more cheaply.
   – If you are focusing on selling to a non-Christian audience then understanding your shopper is even more important. Small retailers can only survive if they give shoppers what they want, and the shopping environment is key. If the books are simply lined up in rows and the shopper is not encouraged to browse, then they will just as easily go elsewhere.

   Hope it works out.
   Simon

   Reply
2. 

   matthew hosier

   28 December 2007

   Interesting post Phil. I am afraid I am your book buying nightmare – I have had a generous book allowance at the church I have been leading, but have spent it almost exclusively at Amazon. My reasons? 1. Yes, it is cheaper. 2. Yes, it is easier. 3. My local Wesley Owen doesn’t often carry the books I want.

   Reason 3. is really the deal breaker. I’m sure Illuminate is different, but too often I find Christian bookshops very depressing – either they are dust-filled and stock little but browning copies of 1970s paperbacks, or their stock is all kitten posters, olive wood trinkets, and books reflecting the broadcasting schedule of the God Channel. For this reason, if anything I have actually discouraged people from shopping at these outlets.

   What churches can do, and what I have done, is run their own bookstall. This doesn’t have the constraints of the overheads incurred by bookshops and can actually be something of a loss leader. I have always thought this an area worth subsidising if it encourages people to read good books. And that is the key – the only books that make it on to our bookstall are ones I feel confident recommending people should read.

   The dominance of Waterstones, etc. means it is now almost impossible for independent book sellers to make it on the high street; so the internet is surely the future for a sector as specialised as ours. Or a really good shop, such as a cafe, that also happens to sell Christian books.

   Reply
3. 

   ianjmatt

   1 January 2008

   Matt

   Interesting points you raise. As you probably know, I work for a major US Christian publisher (Zondervan), and from my perspective it is a rapidly changing market. We don’t publish either the kitten posters or the God TV stuff, and yet about 60% of our business in the UK is done through the ‘bricks and mortar’ Christian bookstores. However, this is down from about 80% just a couple of years ago, so it is changing a lot. We are doing a bit more business through Waterstones/Borders/Easons etc (they have all actually come to me in the last year or so), but not enough to threaten Christian bookstores. However, we are doing a LOT more through on-line sites. Not just Amazon and Play.com, although this is a big chunk, but also Christian sites such as Eden.co.uk, St Andrews, PuraShop.com etc. This isn’t that good for us, as we are trading a multitude of small accounts providing a spread of customers to just a handful.

   I think it is a reality that a Christian bookstore trying to trade commercially just through a high street store is setting itself an impossible goal. However diversification, either of stock range or routes to market can help. With the nature of the internet the web site of the smallest retailer can compete in the google/facebook/saga world of online marketing with the biggest customers.

   Reply
4. 

   christianbookshopsblog

   10 May 2008

   Hello again. What makes you think I’ve got a bit of time on my hands today?

   I know exactly what you mean about these tensions: we need to sell more stuff simply in order to survive, to stay in business… but we don’t want people simply buying more stuff just for the sake of it… which is one reason why I personally will NOT stock ‘Bible Bears’!!

   Somehow we need to hold lightly to what we have…

   It struck me a somewhat ironic that Zondervan’s (sorry Ian, if you should happen to read this, but you can’t deny it!) promotion of Ortberg’s When the game is over — which is all about how ephemeral everything is and breaking free from acquisitiveness — actually fed on people’s acquisitiveness to make it work, by sending out advance copies of the book and promising early bird reviewers the reward of a signed hardback copy…

   Anyway, I for one am very much in favour of keeping Christian bookshops on the high street. But what I think we need to escape from, somehow, is the secular business model: we need churches behind us, supporting us as part of their mission strategy. That doesn’t mean we abandon good business practice: we still aim to be the best at what we do. But profit isn’t — or shouldn’t be — our driving force: we should be a prophetic presence of the high street, not simply another profiteering one.

   Reply