A comment from Rick to get us started:

I think most Catholic publishers would brave the wrath of St. Cyprian’s Bookspot if they had a title they believed would sell in volume through Wal-Mart, B & N’s, and Borders.

The problem is, only the top 500-100 titles are going to sell in volume through those places…and few Catholic titles will break into that elite group.

In most cases, Catholic authors will do better having their books handsold via a core group of dedicated Catholic booksellers than stocked by the chains.

Which gets us back to the issue of the content of the books.

Most Catholic publishers have at least two levels of product. One, which is specifically designated for parish and/or school markets: religious education materials of all levels, pamphlets, books on say…stewardship or parish ministry, and so on.

The second level are slightly more general interest – basically everything else. Within that second level, you’re probably going to find a couple more subdivisions – titles that are marketable to the general reading audience and those that are not.

Let me (ahem) use my own books as examples.

My Prove It books are in the first category, and I would be shocked to ever find any of them in a secular bookstore, and in fact I was when I found one in a Joseph-Beth bookstore in Lexington. (Yes, authors always check bookstores to see if they’re there. Do you blame us.) Books-a-Million, for some reason, carries these titles, but besides that, I wouldn’t really expect OSV to even try to get chains or independents to stock these very narrowly-focused titles. (apologetics for Catholic teens.)

Almost everything else I’ve written falls into the second category, and some are probably more placeable in secular stores than others. I hope. It’s why I write them.

There are some books (not be me..we’re moving on) , that, depending on the moment, would sell in both Catholic bookstores and secular stores of all kinds – the Passion moment is a perfect example. One would have hardly thought, before February 2005, that the visions of Anne Emmerich would be found on a BN bookshelf…but do you know what? They are, and since they’re in public domain, lots of publishers, both Catholic and secular are putting out their own versions. (The newest, as I saw at BEA, is Dover).

The trick is to be able to figure that moment out and, for lack of a better word, exploit it.

And beyond that, most Catholic publishers do, indeed, have titles that would, if given the opportunity and the right kind of marketing push, do well in secular stores and Catholic bookstores. If you doubt the utility and purpose of this look at the CBA market. Evangelicals do not hesitate to reach out and place their books where ever they can (although, as I pointed out in an earlier post, there is fear that this is hurting Christian bookstores).

In fact, I would suggest that most authors seeking to have their books published through Catholic publishers go into it assuming that Catholic publishers are operating out of this mindset and are shocked to find out that they are not.

(Of course, marketing is a tricky issue throughout publishing. Long ago, in Writer’s Digest, I read this: “It’s one thing to get a publisher to publish your book. It’s another thing to get them to sell it.” Why? Because once costs of the first printing are covered, they really don’t care.)

One more example – the book I have coming out in the fall from Loyola is a combined history/personal essay kind of book about traditional Catholic prayers. I want Catholic bookstores to carry it, but I also want chains and independents to carry it – why? Because a lot of the people I particularly want to reach with this book don’t go to Catholic bookstores. It’s that simple. And that’s understood.

My point, I guess is that there are over 60 million Catholics in the US and more than that potentially interested in Catholic-related issues and topics. When you go to a book show like BEA and see the miniscule presence of Catholic publishers, compared to the muscles of the Evangelicals, when you go to a show like RBTE, which caters to the “liturgical” church publishers – Catholic, some Orthodox, Episcopal and Lutheran, mostly, and see what small beans it is, and then go to CBA and absorb all that…you have to wonder…what are Catholic publishers up to? Where are the Catholic writers? And what are we all doing? Are we talking about things that people actually care about and need to hear?