Changes in Australia’s book wholesaling system might mean more chances for Christian books in mainstream stores. Some major distributors have picked up on the Christian market, which means a mainstream bookseller or independent Christian store does not need to go somewhere like Koorong to get hold of Christian books and Bibles. This week a worldwide book distributor, John Wiley, officially announced that it was distributing the SPCK imprints (which include Lion and IVP UK) into Australia. These imprints publish many NT Wright books and the Lion Bible handbooks. (The Other Cheek understands that a SPCK deal with Wiley in the UK now includes Australia)
A reborn Booktopia is once more wholesaling the NLT Bible and other Tyndale House brands.
Once the domain of Bible Society, when it was a wholesaler, Zondervan and Thomas Nelson titles are now being wholesaled by the local Harper Collins, imprints that all live under the NewsCorp umbrella. And Wombat books now come via New South.
Booktopia and John Wiley are giving local stores a better deal than Koorong has in the past, with a full traditional trade discount of 40 per cent
Which all means that secular distributors are getting serious about the Chrisian market – well at least for now. For a local bookstore, this means that Bibles and other Christian books are in the catalogues of the major companies they buy books from – which may mean Christian books may get onto the shelves in these stores.
Meanwhile, Koorong, which in the past had an effective monopoly or near monopoly for most of the major English-language Christian publishing houses (an exception being the Good Book company) has lost that position of market dominance.. Wholesaling was never the major driver of profit for Koorong, but it is a notable change.
There is likely to be a real buzz about these changes at the Christian Bookselling Association of Australia trade fair which comes to Mulgoa in Western Sydney, August 22-25
Image: The Little Lost Bookshop in Katoomba
The fact that non-Christian investors can own and influence Christian publishing is a huge problem.
While not being on the inside, I haven’t seen theological issues in Christian books when they’re owned by secular companies. I’ve more heard of that happening in Christian music, that have secular record labels. Often they want watered down vague lyrics, so that a song has the potential to cross over into secular radio. An example is You Say by Daigle which was on smooth fm and might be just taken as a love song.
But in publishing I’ve seen a lot of bold Christian theological statements in books. I thought they just wanted the Christian market.
Thankfully the for the past couple years, QBD books has had a good range of Christian books including by Tim Keller, CS Lewis and one by Greg Sheridan and more. Qbd is the only shopping centre book chain so to speak of, in Melbourne here.
A recent article about QBD had their CEO saying they did have a shopping centre strategy which made them unique.