Category: News (Page 4 of 10)

The sixth annual Christy Awards held this year in Denver have been announced, though they haven’t posted it to the site yet. Here are the winners in the different categories:

General

Bad Ground by W. Dale Cramer (Bethany House Publishers)

Historical

King’s Ransom by Jan Beazely/ Thom Lemmons (Waterbrook Press)

Romance

Secrets by Kristen Heitzmann (Bethany House Publishers)

Suspense

Tiger in the Shadows by Debbie Wilson (Kregel)

Visionary

The Shadow Within by Karen Hancock (Bethany House Publishers)

First Novel

The Mending String by Cliff Coon (Moody Publishers)

Check out their site for future announcements:
The Christy Awards

Earlier this year, Zondervan gave Kingsbury what is believed to be a "seven-figure" advance on a new nine-book contract that doesn’t begin until fall 2008.

Such lucrative deals once were reserved for more mainstream authors.

With religious books the publishing industry’s hottest sector— it was the biggest gainer with an 11% rise in 2004 — major publishers are seeking to lock up top or promising authors for the long term.

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Christian Book Sales are Surging

According to the Book Industry Study Group, which uses data from all sectors of the industry, total U.S. book sales rose 2.8 percent in 2004 to $28.6 billion, while religious books saw 11 percent growth to nearly $2 billion.

Christian fiction is enjoying a boom that has been linked by some to George W. Bush’s presidency.

And some comments on Lauren Winner on the market: 

"There’s definitely a blurring of lines between religious books and self help books," said Lauren Winner, 28, who is studying for a doctorate in American religious history.

Winner said that religious imprints are raising their literary standards, pointing to the major Christian publisher Thomas Nelson’s fiction imprint Westbow, launched in 2003.

"It’s wholly devoted to doing subtler, less hit-you-over-the-head Christian fiction," she said.

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George Will puts things in perspective:

Christian book sales are booming. "The Rising" by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, the 13th in the astonishing 10-year sequence of Christian novels in the series "Left Behind," was published two months ago and rocketed to the top of Amazon.com’s best-seller list. Three years ago LaHaye and Jenkins, whose first dozen volumes have sold a combined 62 million copies, joined Tom Clancy, John Grisham and J.K. Rowling as the only authors whose novels have first printings of 2 million, partly because they’re being sold in huge volumes at Wal-Mart and Costco. LaHaye and Jenkins are leaving Clancy, Grisham, et al. in the dust.

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Christian chick lit, recently featured on the Today Show and described by Steeple Hill Executive Editor Joan Marlow Golan as novels for modern Christian women who wonder,”How do I live authentically in the kind of world we live in?,” continues to grow in popularity. In response to the genre’s growing readership, the authors of Steeple Hill Cafe, launched Faithchick.com, a blog community that’s welcomed over a thousand visitors since it’s launch in late March.

Veteran authors like Lori Copeland, Annie Jones, Kathryn Springer and Lynn Bulock add depth to the blog mix of newer authors like Marilynn Griffith, an African American home educator, Rachel Hauck, a youth pastor’s wife and Susan May Warren, a former missionary to Russia.

Griffith, whose first novel debuts with Steeple Hill in 2006, put together the blog with the help of her husband.

Griffith said:

Faithchick.com gives Steeple Café readers a chance to get to know our authors better and have a little fun doing so.

And there is fun indeed, with entries like “Hallelujahs on a Harley” and a recent “Living With the Top Down” contest with a Barbie convertible prize. The blog reaches the inner chick of all readers, especially the fifty percent of American women who attend church each week, according to the Barna Group.

The “Are You a Faithchick?” poll is another popular post, allowing readers to earn petals if they “own a cool devotional Bible but can’t remember the date” or “own one or more WOW worship CDs…and a karaoke machine.”