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All about Christian Fiction Publishing

Christian Fiction Publishing is a lucrative business and it can really pay off, but it also comes with a lot of challenges. There are some companies that have completely abandoned Christian Fiction publishing while others have reduced the number of titles that they send out every year. This may give the notion that the market for Christian fiction books is shrinking, but when you look at industry statistics, you see a different picture.

The estimates show that the mass market format, is the one favored by most publishers. This is a format where the books are produced in huge amounts, and then prized at what you would use to buy a snack. Harlequin has produced a Christian fiction romance line called “Love Inspired” with each book being sold at $5.99. This has made the books very popular, and one can see the appeal of the mass market format.

The challenges of Christian Fiction stave from this ability by some publishes to drive prices to such a level that the smaller publishers cannot break even. Industry insiders say that only 3 or 4 publishing houses take the lion’s share of this market. They have mastered what their readers want and keep on producing hit after hit. There are those that have specialized in Romantic suspense, which is what most readers are looking for.

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There are other Christian Fiction publishers who have partnered and pooled their resources to produce best sellers. This is another strategy that is being used in order to beat the mass make strategy that is employed by the bigger publishing houses. Another strategy that has made a great impact is reinventing the publishing house.

When talking about reinventing the publishing house, it does not mean that the overall strategy of printing and marketing should be changed; it means that there should be a change in the topics that are being output.

Christian Romance has really been saturated. This subgenre is dominated by a few major publishing houses and it would be very difficult to publish a new romance book if you are a small publisher. That is the reason why some publishing houses are looking for less common Christian publishing subgenres. One of the most popular is Amish fiction because there is so much that can be written about these people. Again, the Amish are avid readers and are a huge pool of potential customers.

For a small Christian publishing house to truly make it, it should consider entering into a new subgenre and then producing a best seller. It would be prudent to take time to find such a subgenre and then properly create and publish a formidable book, which would take the Christian publishing world by storm.

When considering entering into the world of Christian Fiction publishing, one must be ready to take a different approach and then market it with a lot of gusto. A new method that has become popular is “time slipping”, where the reader is taken to different time periods throughout the book. Do you have any new ideas?