Christian Speculative Fiction in the Publishing Industry

In 2006, a spring issue of Writers Digest magazine predicted that religious fiction would be one of the biggest growth areas over the next five years. In spite of this welcome news, the Christian Booksellers Association (CBA), an organization of Christian bookstores, remains slow to embrace some genres, such as speculative fiction's three subgenres: fantasy, science fiction and horror. Thanks to the Lord for Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia films' successes in the general market. Major Christian publishing houses have experimented with trials in the young adult fantasy market and signed a handful of authors. (Unfortunately, the major houses have yet to venture further-the adult fantasy market remains largely untapped.) The independent houses are taking the lead, and the risks, to get good Christian speculative fiction to readers but their efforts are blocked in several ways.

Horror, disguised on Christian bookshelves with spiritual thriller or chiller labels, has been accepted since the late 1980s with Frank Peretti's first novels. T.L. Hines and Ted Dekker carry on today with their supernatural thrillers.

That leaves science fiction. Thought Probes: Philosophy Through Science Fiction Literature, a college textbook, describes sci-fi as "the handmaiden of worldviews." For over a decade, Christian sci-fi authors have seized this opportunity as the perfect vehicle for the Christian worldview. The genre, alas, remains virtually nonexistent in Christian bookstores.

Christendom has always been suspicious of and slow to accept new things. Science fiction, horror and fantasy stories of faith have long been marginalized by believers. Not just believers who once said that rock music was of the Devil and could never glorify God, but even by actual genre fans. There are three main ways in which Christian speculative fiction artists have felt the brunt of discrimination.

The first point of marginalization is twofold: profit motive in the publishing industry and believers who judge books by their publishers. Purchasing agents focus primarily on profitability and company policy, not the spiritual growth of book-buyers. Contrast Thomas Nelson's public statements in a Publisher's Weekly (02.11.08) article:

"We are not a Christian fiction publisher," said Allen Arnold, senior v-p and publisher for fiction at Nelson. "We work with Christian authors who want to tell great stories," he said, explaining that his authors weave their faith into their stories.

"At Thomas Nelson, we are all about the mission of Christian publishing." This from Michael Hyatt, Thomas Nelson CEO (04.27.08) on his blog: From Where I Sit. "But we don't believe that these two-mission and positive financial results-are incompatible."

So, why the two seemingly contrary statements? Arnold's assertion is all about the money-an attempt to appeal to a wider audience. Hyatt's keeps his readership base happy. There is nothing wrong with an upfront profit motive-of course Christian publishers want to enjoy a cross-over market like the general market publishers reach. But, these sound like politicians stumping the campaign trail: tell the audience of the moment what they want to hear.

While few readers get stuck on publishing imprints, there are a large number of Christians who exclusively read books from Christian bookstores-they rarely shop the general market bookstores like Barnes & Noble. Many use the CBA in this manner as a seal of approval. While an individual's motive may be spiritual purity, the Bible orders believers themselves to employ discernment. Such a strategy allows censorship of thought.

One must understand that the motive of CBA bookstores is profit: that is why any company is in business. In appealing to their customers' desire for spiritual purity, these bookstores have, over the years, erected a Pharisaical literary standard for publishers and writers. A legalistic standard that transcends Scriptural sensibilities has one CBA list forbidding even baby-words, such as poo.

Christian women over thirty comprise a huge psychographic of Christian bookstore shoppers. As a result, fiction genres that appeal to these shoppers get a vast majority of retail space. There is nothing wrong with women over thirty, or the historical and romance genres; indeed, romance is perfect for dissecting agape, eros, philia, and storge, the four different types of love with which God has gifted humanity. The CBA gives authors of such fiction excellent exposure, but because of an inability to profitably market other genres, Christian bookstores have inadvertently relegated themselves to niche marketplaces.

Even though speculative fiction and westerns are the strongest genres for tales of good versus evil, CBA shoppers aren't fans of such fiction. As a result it is policy not to stock a selection of these books. In one Christian bookstore, I had three requests for my award-winning sci-fi novel in one week. Despite apparent demand, corporate policy still forbade the manager to stock the book.

For their own profit motives, CBA stores would, of course, like book shoppers to believe that they are the only, or at the very least, the best source for Christian books. The CBA will never admit their stores are lacking in any way, even to help fiction-ministries they cannot effectively market. As a result, genre-fans have given up seeking their favorite fiction in Christian bookstores, and head for the general market.

Due to CBA policies, authors with wonderful fiction-ministries fall between the cracks. Some writers give up, and strip Christian content from their fiction in order to submit a manuscript to general market publishers. Fortunately, for such genre fans and authors, decades of business-as-usual is over. The free-market dam has finally burst, circumventing the CBA. To understand how, one needs a basic history and knowledge of recent changes in the publishing industry.

The trend toward corporate downsizing and the birth of the Internet has impacted many spheres of life, but few with such force as publishing. Contracting services and promoting through the Information Superhighway means major publishers are no longer the only gatekeepers. New small independent presses, or Indies, spring up every year, and many specialize in niche markets. In 1994 Barnes & Noble reported that 75% of their book sales came from the ten largest publishers. Three years later books from these houses accounted for less than 50% of B&N's sales.

In an effort to staunch the bleeding, the major publishers used the only advantage they had left: an amount of money unavailable to small houses. If an Indie proves successful, a traditional house looking to expand in their market simply purchases the company. If an Indie has a single successful author, that writer is offered a contract, and stolen away. Anyone may track publishing house acquisitions through the free PW Daily and Religion Bookline newsletters.

Large presses also improved profitability in an increasingly competitive market by focusing on their established and proven content-producers. They let the Indies risk publishing new and unknown writers-particularly in fiction. This is clearly evidenced by comparing any early 1990s copy of Writers Market to a current version, and comparing how few houses will now accept unsolicited or unagented manuscripts. Unless one has a famous name, or a doctorate in their field of specialty, the first time a writer is signed it will very likely be by an Indie.

In the new millenium, the number of book sales from smaller presses continued to increase (in fact doubled from previous years) and the market share of the top publishers like Random House, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins was cut substantially. According to the Publishers Marketing Association, 78 percent of titles published come from small/self publishers. In the free market the Indie-piranha were eating the traditional-house-sharks.

In the Christian publishing world, the stats are not as significant; according to Thomas Nelson's analysis as recently as March 2008 the top ten houses still held onto 82% of the market. Note, this statistic includes non-fiction and Bible book sales which is the mainstay of these publishers.

In our era, serious royalty-paying small independent presses can produce products equal in quality to those of the major publishing houses. The only lingering difference between large and small houses is the amount of marketing dollars available to promote each title. Look for more news on the business end of Christian speculative fiction in part-two of my three-part interview with Jeff Gerke, founder of Marcher Lord Press, the first publishing company exclusive to Christian speculative fiction. Mr. Gerke has worked for three major Christian publishing houses, and is using that industry knowledge to break-out spec-fic.

The second point of marginalization is theological. For decades I've witnessed a pointless debate between authors over who really writes Christian fiction. The long-standing question has been: should Christian authors simply write the best stories they can and let the quality of their work glorify God, or must their stories be overtly Christian? The obvious answer to this question is: both. All Christian fiction should reflect Scripture's truths. Every individual author has their own specific talents and purpose that glorify God in different ways. To help end this debate, I call the subtle Christian fiction, and the overt Biblical fiction. A Lost Genre Guild member, linguist Stephen L. Rice, wrote the definition of Biblical speculative fiction for Wikipedia.

This leads to another question: can fantasy, horror, and science-fiction glorify God? Lost Genre Guild members have not run into this very often. One of the best arguments against our fiction-Ministry is based on Christ's parables. Critics say that because Christ didn't use speculative fiction in his parables, it cannot glorify God. I counter such logic with another with another question. Christ's parables didn't include automobiles, motion pictures, or flush toilets: if one of my kids watches The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe on my Subaru's DVD player while the other runs into a highway rest-stop, are we sinning?

The third point of marginalization is literary. On June 14, 2008, I attended MO*CON III, hosted by the Indiana Horror Writers Association. At the Lost Genre Guild booktable a self-proclaimed atheist flipped open a copy of Light at the Edge of Darkness and chuckled at the concept of Biblical speculative fiction. Science-fiction, horror, and fantasy have been dominated by non-Christians over the last century. Many incorrectly assume that spec-fic written from a Biblical worldview will necessarily be preachy.

Critics forget that it's just as easy to write a preachy atheistic story as it is to write a preachy Christian story. If theme is not part of a story's subtext (character and setting), the story's morality-play will bash an audience. People read fiction to be entertained by a specific artform. If a reader wants theology, they will head for the nonfiction aisle. Any fiction author's first job is to entertain, regardless of theme or worldview. Such criticism from unbelievers is not new to Christian spec-fic artists: on the contrary it's expected.

Those expecting Christian fiction to be of lesser quality than general market fiction do have a legitimate supporting point. Some CBA fiction has long received literary criticism by many, Christians included, for spiritually idealistic, sterilized, and unrealistic elements. This is where the CBA's aforementioned Pharisaical standard becomes a literary millstone. Spiritual purists are familiar with the wise adage, garbage-in, garbage-out, but the Apostle Paul orders us to be in the world but not of it, and tells us to be wise as serpents. How else may we discern knowledgably, and use such discussions as points of evangelism or discipleship?

An inability to discuss the classics of any genre leads to a type of intellectual monasticism and brings to life another wise adage: too Heavenly minded to be of any Earthly good. Podcaster Derek Gilbert of PID RADIO likes to say that our subculture has isolated itself in a Christian ghetto. The world has left us to this ivory tower of our own creation, and when spiritual idealism is apparent in our art, reviewers and critics rightly lay it bare.

Sadly, the point of marginalization that has proven the toughest to overcome is the first. Believers like to believe that the C in CBA means that these publishers are as interested in fiction-ministry as they are in profit. In reality, the C is merely a market label. I offer the following awful examples as proof.

Earlier this month (June 2008) I attended the Chicago Tribune Printers Row Book Fair. During conversations with other Christian authors about valuable resources on the Web, the name of one disappointing organization kept popping up. A clique of writers, all of whom are either published by traditional houses, or seek to be, sit in executive positions atop one of the Web's most respected Christian fiction organizations. These authors have consistently been condescending toward and discriminatory against anyone whose works are not shelved in Christian bookstores or published by the major Christian houses.

An Indie-published romance author attempted to get one of her novels into this organization's book award contest. She was informed that her book had not sold enough copies to qualify for the contest. The author pointed out that considering her publisher was an Indie it had sold a very respectable number of copies, and that contest requirements seemed quite steep; in fact had changed from previous years. An officer of this organization gave the debate-ending reply: "We have prayed over it." Can't argue with those words.

When I first visited this organization's message board, I discovered a thread about one of the contests they host-these contests are among the most respected in Christian publishing. Numerous objections regarding judging inconsistencies had been posted. Several members offered suggestions on how to make erratic judging more consistent.

In this thread the same prayer strategy used on the author above was employed to silence objections. One would expect officers to be concerned for the contest's reputation for fairness. Not only were suggestions to improve judging ignored, but officers told writers who objected to pray about their bad attitudes, be thankful for being in the contest to begin with, and politely called sore losers. In the interest of their own reputations these prideful officers would never post any sound-bite rudeness. But, any skilled writer can just as effectively use what's not said-and these are very skilled wordsmiths.

In another instance, after they had belittled a colleague, I very politely but firmly confronted this group's officers on their behavior, and plainly asked how we as a group could improve the contest. They publicly called my confrontation objectionable, then deleted my posts. In private e-mail, they intimidated me and legalistically twisted Scriptures.

In one genre-category of their book awards, only five books met submission standards. Three of these had been written by the same author, and all five placed in the three winning spots. I do not question the skill of the competing novelists, but how meaningful is such an award? More C business as usual-readers buy award-winning fiction and with the actions of their more famous authors, the large publishing houses have essentially secured for themselves some of the most respected awards in Christian fiction. Draconian contest rules exclude smaller competition, often Indie houses, and undesirable contestants are torpedoed by judging techniques that are obviously not supposed to improve.

Winning contestants give book-buying Christians the impression that the major houses produce the best products. Perhaps this is true, but with profit at stake, truly recognizing Christian literary excellence is not this organization's goal. Maximizing profit trumps a level playing field.

Sally Stewart's Faith Writers is a great group of cross-genre authors working together for God's glory, and the type of Christian writing community I'd hoped to find on the Web. I'm proud to be a member and highly recommend it.

Another novelist and Lost Genre Guild member was recently placed on a moderated status in, of all places, a Christian and Biblical speculative fiction Yahoo group. The crime? Excessive criticism of the CBA. This novelist had only recently discovered the ugly truth about the CBA, and how it actively discriminated against her own Christian speculative fiction novel that had been short-listed for a Bram Stoker award. After expressing her frustration, some members of the group were "bored" by the problem. One would think that of all people, a group of Christian writers and genre fans would understand how spec-fic artists are ticked-off tired by decades of disrespect.

For any interested in a group sympathetic to such business concerns, the Lost Genre Guild's private newsgroup allows members to politely express themselves without fear of censorship, no matter how unpopular or boring ones posts may be.

An acquisitions editor for a major Christian publishing house responded to a post on a popular speculative fiction group blog. The editor publicly stated that more genre fiction would be published if only submitted manuscripts were of a higher-quality. His message was: go out and learn the craft. Just a few months after the interview, a guild member spoke with the same editor on the phone. In private, the editor admitted that of the five or six excellent science fiction projects that had been pitched to the company's board, all were rejected outright; not because of quality, but simply because they were sci-fi.

"After twelve years of beating my head against the wall, it dawned on me that the entire CBAfiction industry is set up to service a demographic that is not interested in speculative fiction. Nothing against the CBA or that wonderful demographic. But no matter what I tried, so long as this was the demographic those publishers reached, Christian speculative fiction would never become a beloved genre."
-Jeff Gerke, from Marcher Lord Press: One-of-a-Kind Christian Publishing Company

Indie-published novelists experience marginalization at the hands of other groups as well. Lost Genre Guild members have submitted award-winning novels to Christian blog-tour organizations. Because the authors had been published by Indies, on one blog tour, they were categorically turned down (not CBA-published [sic]). Another blog-tour group subjects Indie novels to an intense level of scrutiny that ECPA-published work gets a pass on. Guild authors have reviewed CBA-approved novels for blog tour organizations and have found a range of literary flaws in the toured books. This should come as no surprise to anyone, alas, apart from the Bible, there is no such thing as a perfect book. The point here is that Indie novels are subjected to a different set of rules even when there is no profit to be made, or lost, by the promotion organizations.

At least part of every Christian writer's motivation is bringing glory to God. The Christian publishing world is not as golden-rule as they would have readers believe. There exists an ugly profit-motive double standard, even for genres like Biblical sci-fi that traditional houses won't touch. Anyone who takes the time to look at LostGenreGuild .com will see that the Guild promotes quality speculative fiction no matter who publishes it. Members of the guild promote the good CBA-approved fiction alongside Indie novels. Just last week I agreed to help CBA-approved novelist, Eric Wilson, promote his upcoming spiritual thriller on my review blog, A Frank Review.

It's what we who love the genre must all do, no matter how the prejudice swings. Raising awareness for Christian and Biblical speculative fiction, or any non-CBA genre, is a team effort.

Our art is not about fortune, glory, and power. As long as we allow profiteers and pride to squelch such powerful worldview literary ministries, we're not doing our best for His glory.