ECPA’s "Christian Book of the Year” is announced and endorsed by
Glenn Beck on FOX News.

Glenn Beck featured the Christian Book of the Year on FOX News' The Tipping Point, stating, "This book changed my life and congratulations to Eric Metaxas as it just won the Christian Book of the Year."

Publishers Weekly and Christian Retailing immediately announced the award winners with many other online periodicals following, including CCM Magazine, Charisma Magazine, Christian News, Crosswalk, Urban Christian News, and Christian Writers Marketplace. Sites featuring award winner news include Baptist Press, Continental News, and Salem Radio Network News.

Christianity Today will feature the winning titles in print ads this fall in Christianity Today, Catalyst Leadership, Books & Culture, and Leadership.

RETAIL PROMOTIONS RECAP

Barnes & Noble has created a dedicated page, along with a feature on their Religion home page and Book Award page.

Amazon has created a Christian Book Award® dedicated page, featuring finalists and winners. In addition, the Christian Book Award® winners are now featured at the top of their Christian Books page. (Our staff is now working to help them update cover images to include the Christian Book Award® seal.)

Christian retail partners provided coverage immediately following the announcement on their home pages and dedicated award pages: Christianbook.com, Parable, Berean, Family Christian Stores and The Munce Group (Munce's More to Life magazine has a readership of 50,000). LifeWay will follow suit very soon, and Crossings Book Club has featured the Fiction winner to their readers.

Program partner Innovative manages 200+ Signature Websites (clients include CLC Ministries, Wesleyan Publishing, TBN, etc.) and features the Christian Book Award finalists and winners on their client websites.

Retail and Media efforts increase

The Christian Book Award® finalists and winners continue to receive broad media attention and marketing exposure through major retail outlets. Efforts to increase the visibility of the Christian Book Award® program are more successful than ever this year. The awareness of the award recipients have been raised by the retail partners of this program and both trade and general media. It is clear that the changes we made five years ago allows more recognition by these organizations. Consumers have seen and heard about the winners and finalists this year in a variety of media that we have listed for you to the left.

First, a "Behind the Scenes" look at what we've been up to...

Five years ago, the ECPA Recognition Committee did a comprehensive review of what was then known as the Gold Medallion Book Award program. The committee, made up of publishers representing all sizes of houses, further clarified the main objective of this award program: to raise awareness among consumers of Christian books in order to increase sales. They spoke with Christian and general trade retailers and media in order to get input as to how to make the program more media and marketing-friendly in order to meet this goal. It was evident that two major changes needed to happen in order for media and retailers to best promote finalists and winners:

1) Decrease the number of award categories to 6-8 rather than 20 as it is easier to focus attention on a few rather than many.

2) Change the award name to better communicate – especially for general retail and media outlets – what the award is: The Christian Book Award®.

In their recent five-year review of the program, the Recognition Committee unanimously agreed that these changes remain critical to achieving our goal to help retailers and media communicate about award-winning Christian content to their audiences. The only minor revisions they made to the program were updates to some of our category names (i.e. Christian Life is now called Non-Fiction, etc.) and the inclusion of digital formats.

From USA Today to FOX News: Changes have paid off

These changes continue to pay off. The Christian Book Award® finalists and winners receive growing recognition in both Christian and general retail and media outlets, culminating in one of our most successful years this year. Each year we work one-on-one with retailers and media to give them the information they need to promote the finalists and winners. They give us good input and validation on what helps them to best communicate to their constituencies.

In the last five years we have seen the "Christian Book of the Year” featured more in general media like USA Today, and this year it was even mentioned on FOX News. (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yzJXdv8PFA).

General retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble have developed several web pages around our recipients.

In fact, "The Christian Book Award®” category is now listed with "Pulitzer,” "National Book Awards,” and "Nobel Prize for Literature” on the Barnes & Noble website!

(See http://www.barnesandnoble.com/u/book-awards/379001102/?cds2Pid=17798&linkid=1256658)

All the major Christian retail outlets now partner in featuring the finalists and winners on their websites and/or sending notices to their consumer bases. Christianity Today runs print ads with the six winning covers in their fall issues of Christianity Today, Leadership and Books & Culture.

This is all "behind the scenes” work we are doing in order to advocate for our members’ content in the marketplace!

"With over 17,000 product views on the 2011 Christian Book Award® page so far, it’s obvious that consumers are interested in finding out which products are hot and are considered the best of the best. Thank you for allowing us to provide our customers this important information. It is truly a pleasure to partner with you and ECPA on this project."
-- Richard Hauhuth, Director of Online Sales & Marketing, Innovative/Signature Websites

2011 Christian Book Award® Retail and Media Partners: