Apparently, last weekend Dallas hosted the first Christian Book Expo. Organizers expected 15,000 to 20,000 people to show up. Actual attendance? 1,500 people.
The event’s organizer performs an autopsy here and determines that just about everything to do with the event—its location, its advertising, the economy, the entry fee—was wrong:
I am not sure publishers are going to want to try this again next year. With the current economic realities we are all facing, we really can’t afford to try too many things that don’t promise an immediate payback. That doesn’t mean that Christian Book Expo is a bad idea. It may just mean that we have to re-launch this at a different time with a different model.
Several years ago, Christian books were the fastest-growing subcategory in all of publishing. I’m not sure if that’s still true, but this particular event looks more like a publishing failure than a Christian one.
my guess is those apt to buy christian books are disproportionally affected by layoffs: blue collar workers.
Maybe the rapture happened. I know I wouldn’t notice anyone missing.
Probably just competition from Twilight.
Interesting that, among the list of excuses was “nobody wants to come downtown.” “They’re afraid for their safety.” Plenty of people will come to downtown Dallas for the right event, but apparently not the Christian book expo types. He’s right that a mega church in the ‘burbs would have been a better choice for all those who are scared of downtown.
Several years ago a big chuck of “Christian” publishing was the Left Behind series. It had more in common with Sci-Fi/Fantasy than religion by my reading, but be that has it may, it ran its course. Has there been any new “Christian” phenomenon to take its place?
@5 – now it’s Christian books that are being Left Behind!