Lighthouse Trails Publishing Note: Today, we received the following letter from one of our book distributors. The letter is written by Family Christian Stores. They are announcing their new EMERGING CULTURE PRODUCTS SECTION. For those of you who are concerned about this and wish to contact FCS, contact information is at the bottom of this posting. According to the FCS website, they are “America’s leading specialty retailer with over 299 stores and 5000 employees” dedicated solely to the Christian market.
The Letter:
We have for the past couple of years been considering setting up in our stores an Emerging Culture section. This will finally be implemented in February, 2007
The purpose of this e-mail is to allow you to identify your titles in our assortment that might fit into this section. Attached is a list of your current replenished skus at Family Christian Stores. Please do the following:
1. Go through this list and highlight in yellow on the attached spreadsheet those titles that you feel will fit well into an emergent culture section.
2. E-mail your highlighted spreadsheet back to me by January 5, 2007
Feel free to sort or arrange this spreadsheet in any manner you wish (maybe by author or whatever method will make it easiest for you to find titles). It does not need to come back sorted as it is now.
WHAT ARE EMERGING CULTURE TITLES?
Emerging Culture titles would be books written specifically for the 25 to 35 year olds that are actively a part of the post modern culture. Good examples of Emerging Culture books would be:
* Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller
* Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell
* Searching For God Knows What by Donald Miller
* The Gutter by Craig Gross
* Any titles from Relevant Publishing
* Raggamuffin Gospel Visual Edition (the regular edition would appeal to the broad base of customer, but the visual edition would appeal to the emergent)
* Most books by Brian McLaren
* Most books by Erwin McManus
* Some books by Leonard Sweet
And so on.
These could be books specifically for the Emerging Church Movement, but not necessarily ONLY for that.
WHAT EMERGING CULTURE SECTION TITLES ARE NOT:
Emerging Culture titles are NOT teen interest titles. The customer is older than teens
Emerging Culture titles are NOT titles that would strongly also appeal to Baby Boomers.
Emerging Culture titles are NOT simply something that is trendy or “cool.” The writing style and the specific audience must appeal to this culture
Emerging Culture titles are NOT just those titles referring to or of interest to those that are a part of the Emerging Church movement. This is not a theological section, but more of a lifestyle section.
Emerging Culture titles in this section are NOT to include DVD, book on CD or other audio products. This is a book section.
Finally, it would NOT include Bible reference or group study books. These will stay in their current home.
If you feel that you don’t have any books in your list that would fit into this Emerging Culture section, that is fine. Just let me know. Not every publisher is publishing to that market. If you are not sure, then you probably don’t have titles for this market. Most publishers that have applicable titles are strategically targeting the emerging culture market. If you are not sure, highlight the titles that you think might fit and we can take a look at them to see what we think.
Hopefully this helps a little. Let me know if you have questions.
After this initial crunch, we will begin to add new books as they are presented to us. Hopefully this is the only time you will need to go through this exercise.
Attached is your current list of books that we replenish to our stores.
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Tim Way
Senior Buyer:
Books, Family Entertainment Videos, Bibles and Church Resources
Family Christian Stores
Address:
Family Christian Stores General Merchandising, A-5
5300 Patterson Ave, SE
Grand Rapids, MI 49530
Phone: 616-554-8711 Fax: 616-554-8705
Team Contacts:
David Austin: Book Buyer 616-554-8754
Don Kooima: Bargain Book Buyer 616-554-8649
Jim Gager: Bible Buyer 616-554-8734
Joey McBride: Church Resources Buyer 616-554-8642
Mike Terwilliger: Sr. Merch Manager 616-554-8655
John Miller: Merch Manager 616-554-8787
