Name Your Market!!!

The song has been sung. The time is upon us. Now we must stand together as one to preserve the integrity of freedom of speech and freedom of religion on which this country was founded. For too long the "conservative evangelical Baptist" (sorry, but they started it) have been allowed to reign supreme in publishing, have stripped the broad meaning from the label "Christian" and have used and abused every author who dare call themselves that.

I dare say there's no greater grievance against an author than to take a broad label and apply it to a very targeted and discriminating lot. Aye they lassoed it, tied it up and held it hostage for far too long. But now it's time. Since their inception in 1950, they've relentlessly claimed to be the ONLY voice in Christian fiction but published nothing beyond restrictively written and "safe" fiction for "Christian" bookstores, formerly known as Baptist Bookstores. Any author who dare approach them with general market fiction is spit upon, beat up and cast out as heathen.

I say no more.

Change the name. Be proud of your market and call it what it is. Your intimidating ways do not scare us. They sadden us. It's deeply disturbing. Now all you scallywags who've read this, jump over to my interview at http://thechristianmanifesto.com/archives/3602#comments and speak your mind. This interview was done three years ago. As grand as it was then, it was moved shortly after going public without the pictures that went with it. It of course eventually went into archive and was moved a second time. Not intentionally I might add but just because that's the way most interviews are handled if your a "general market" small published author whose work happened to appeal to many of this markets readers.

Upon asking where the link went this second time, I was accused of throwing a temper-tantrum and called unprofessional because I dared to infer the site wasn't being run very professionally.

So be it.

The interview is up once again. Take it and run. I don't care what comments you make but for the love of God, if you're sick of the bully, intimidating ways of the "Christian" publishers, now including publishers who don't actually pay a fee to belong to the Christian Booksellers Association, then say so. I'm sure that like me, many of you have been kicked off many sites where these authors reign supreme, (if you were ever allowed in,) have been told you aren't a "Christian," which of course is true if you strip off the broader meaning of the label Christian, and have been drug across the coals and cast out as though you were yesterdays garbage. As I said in the beginning, the song as been sung. Now is your chance. In conclusion, all I'm asking for is a name change. Targeted markets are great but not when they strip the meaning from a broad label to abuse it accordingly.

Name your market!

If the story is to be believed, David carried five stones with him to defeat Goliath. It only took one.

Things that disturb me.

Since I'll be in the Dayton Ohio area for "Lockdown at Bellbrook" I decided to see what "Independent" bookstores I could find in the area since Barnes & Noble won't let any less-than-large publisher in to do an event anymore, not even on consignment.

I found the St. Mark Bookstore and decided to check it out since it sounded Catholic and not "Christian" or rather "evangelical" or rather what would have been a Baptist Bookstore back in the day.

It sounded like a really neat store but I had to flinch at the wording on their Mission Declaration page. It reads:

St. Mark Bookshop, Inc. is an ecumenical Christian bookshop dedicated to presenting the best of all publishers and manufacturers of Christian and Roman Catholic books, media and religious gift items. We serve all of our customers with courtesy, honesty, efficiency and expediency.

An ecumenical Christian bookshop with ecumenical meaning, the aim of unity among all Christian churches throughout the world. The part that disturbs me greatly is this. The store acknowledges a desire to be an ecumenical Christian bookshop. And their dedication is to present the best of all publishers and manufacturers of Christian and Roman Catholic Books?

Are Roman Catholics not Christian? And you can't use the label Christian anymore in publishing without it marking only "one" group of publishers who write targeted fiction for a very discriminating Christian audience.

Hard to be ecumenical if these are the only publishers a bookstore pulls stock from.

No publisher as ever labeled themselves a Christian publisher except those who provide "targeted" fiction to one denominational audience. The proof is in the pudding. Catholics do indeed fall under the broad label Christian yet those publishers don't call their work Christian fiction or Christian non-fiction. They mark it as Roman Catholic or Catholic.

So yes, I remain disturbed by this.

Is the average Joe disturbed by this? Probably not but if you're an author trying to compete in this market, you should be.

My thoughts on the current trend of large bookstore closings!

Large bookstores were once small bookstores who helped large publishers get their books to readers. When technology changed and made it easier and less costly to publish, along came small publishers. Large bookstores refused to acknowledge the change. Large publishers were fine with this. It limited the competition. Large bookstores weren't about to bite the hand that has fed them so long. But I'll bet they never expected that same hand to actually starve them to death and then come back looking for the scraps. Funny how that worked out. And I don't mean funny ha-ha either. :(

For those of you who say that technology ruined the publishing industry, you couldn't be more wrong. Technology has leveled the playing field and so to all those large bookstores who are collapsing under their unwillingness to embrace small and self published authors and to all large publishers who can't figure out which way to turn now, I have only this to say and you should just be glad you can't hear me sing it. . .

Welcome to the Jungle!

You can have anything you want but you better not take it from me.

Aspiring author question.

I always enjoy being asked questions about my journey thus far and I'm always surprised as well. It's not like I've made any kind of an impact. Good grief. Set your goals higher! LOL Anyway, here's the question with identifying information left out.

Dear Ms. Dent,

I have a completed Christian speculative fiction novel, "{name of book}" which I am sending out to agents - could I ask the name of yours, and if s/he is accepting unsolicited queries?

Thanks so much!
{Seminary Professor}


My first suggestion would be to hire a professional editor to have the MS edited. This is what your competition will be doing. And prospective publishers (small traditional houses as you won't get the attention of a large house not even with an agent should you manage to snag one of those)will greatly appreciate the fact that you cared enough to put a little money (make sure editor's quotes are competitive)into your venture. Plus they'll actually look at you should they be interested in the genre or story you've submitted. Rejections will simply be based on whether they're taking new work at the time. I'm speaking from experience here.

You can ask for the name of my agent but you already know it. It's Sue Dent. You can look for an agent if you like, but you'll just be adding to the rejection letters you get and time you'll waste. And agents aren't even publishers.

Also you might call your work something other than Christian Speculative Fiction. This isn't a genre recognized by publishers and there isn't really an audience for stories labeled as such. My work has been called Christian Speculative Fiction but I never called it that. If I had, I'd never have been published unless I self-published that is.

Don't fall into the trap of looking for CBA affiliated Christian agents either, or rather agents who will only show your work to CBA houses. Sadly it's hard to tell them apart from the other agents out there who gladly take work written by Christians and actually call themselves Christian agents as well. Affiliated houses won't even look at your MS if it's called Christian Speculative Fiction. I contacted several Christian agents not understanding that the CBA publishers they submitted to ran from this genre like the plague, when it seemed most of my readers were from the "Christian" market and I was told by every one of them that none of the publishers they submitted to would look at my work.

When I suggested to one of the largest "Christian" agents out there that I felt CBA publishers would take a look at my MS, he still refused to represent me. His words of encouragement were, "what do I know? I turned down Dekker." On a side note, Dekker's work isn't Christian Speculative Fiction either. Like I said, the genre is new and not really a genre at all. It doesn't make sense to call your work this if you're trying to get a publisher to look at you. Dekker wrote very safe CBA oriented work initially. After all, he was and is published by an affiliated house . . . well except for his latest book. That was published under another non-affiliated imprint that to date hasn't published anyone but affiliated publishers. Sort of a non-affiliated, affiliated imprint. I know, right?

For those of you who don't know who Ted Dekker is, perhaps because you don't care anything about the CBA market, he's one of their bigger named authors. Like many affiliated authors his work now shows up in general market bookstores even though the association his publisher belongs to doesn't allow non-affiliated work into their stores without extremely heavy scrutiny if at all. His work is still completely CBA friendly though CBA seems to be content to let him step outside their boundaries every now and again. I suppose so he can pull over potential customers. Who knows?

Bottom line, even if you think your work fits the criteria for Christian Speculative Fiction, don't present it as such to a publisher. General Market publishers (yes I mean non-affiliated Christian houses too) will drop you faster than a hot potato if they pick your query up at all. And CBA affiliated Christian agents and publishers will reject you even faster. There are smaller publishers accepting work called Christian Speculative Fiction but they are few and far between and most are ex-CBA affiliated publishers or editors who still only know how to write for a very closed and exclusive market and well, they know how to work that market.

Good luck though. I wish you well. ;)