Tag Archives: Christian Bookshops

Porn Sells

Posted on February 7, 2009 by | 2 Comments

Even in Christian Bookshops. Not directly, I’m sure, and probably not under the counter in brown paper bags either,  though I’m told that when Alan Mann & Steve Chalke’s book The Lost Message of Jesus began to attract controversy, some Christian Bookshops resorted to such measures. Christians are, indeed, a very peculiar people.

Christianity Magazine, February 2009

Christianity Magazine, February 2009

But what I’m talking about here is the latest (February 2009) issue of Christianity Magazine, with its editorial and lead article looking at the question of Internet Porn:

Normally at the LST Bookshop we have several copies left over at the end of the month and end up selling them off cheap when the next issue comes in. This time around — just one week into February — we’ve sold out already. I’m not entirely sure whether that’s a good thing or not: what do you think?

Two things I am sure about, however: as John Buckeridge says in his editorial, keeping silent about this issue doesn’t help anyone; and this post will attract more spammers as well as more genuine traffic than most others so far…

Half of all Christian men use Internet Pornography

Half of all Christian men use Internet Pornography

Bus image courtesy of the Atheist Bus Slogan Generator:

ruletheweb.co.uk/b3ta/bus | tinyurl.com/bus-slogan

(h/t to Phil Whittall of Illuminate, Shrewsbury for the Bus Slogan Generator)

→ 2 Comments

Posted in Bookshop Ramblings

Tagged , ,

A Further Note about Directory Updates

Posted on January 26, 2009 by | Leave a comment

UK Christian Bookshops Directory

First of all, my thanks to everyone who has been in touch about out of date UKCBD entries: the updates requested are underway and the focus on updates will continue throughout January/February 2009.

Secondly, my apologies to those who have been inconvenienced as a result of out of date entries. It is to you, primarily, that this post is addressed, as well, of course, as serving as another reminder to bookshop owners and managers.

Since the project was launched back in 2001, it has grown from a simple index of a relative handful of Christian Bookshops to a much more wide ranging resource, featuring trade news (news section launched 2004) and Book Reviews (also 2004) alongside separate indexes of Christian Cafés and Secondhand Dealers. Most recently, this blog was added in April 2008 followed by SPCK/SSG News, Notes & Info (June 2008), tracking developments in the ongoing debacle of the former SPCK bookshops.

As the project has grown, the amount of work involved has grown with it, making it increasingly difficult to track entries and keep them updated. At the same time, however, the project has remained a free and voluntary service: there are no charges for Directory listings and there are no paid staff.

Today, with more than 600 businesses listed, it’s more important than ever for those businesses to take ownership of their entries: for business owners, managers and shop staff to check their entries regularly and to take the initiative in letting me know when changes are needed (a point in fact spelt out in the site’s Terms of Use, excerpt below for quick reference).

Please keep this in mind when using the Directory: much as I’d like to have the time to review every entry on a regular basis, most entries will only ever be as up to date as the information last provided by the company/organisation concerned. If you come across an out of date entry, please make a point of notifying both the company concerned and myself.

Modification dates are noted at the top of each page: these, however, show when the page itself was last changed, not that all entries on the page have been checked. Entries added or updated since May 2005, however, feature a link to a corresponding standalone page and since January 2008 these have included the actual entry modification date, as shown top right in this example:

Standalone Entry for Norwich Christian Resource Centre

Standalone Entry for Norwich Christian Resource Centre

And finally, for those who may be wondering…

A Note About Finances

The project is financed by a combination of sponsorships, subscriptions, affiliate programmes and Google Adsense Advertising: 

This generates enough income to cover essential running costs such as web hosting, domain registration fees and other admin expenses along with some advertising. It does not generate enough to cover the cost of a full or even part time administrator. If you’d like to help or have any suggestions for better fundraising with that end in view, please get in touch. Thank you.

Excerpt from UKCBD Terms of Use

Whilst every effort will be made to ensure that information in the Directory is accurate and up to date, no liability whatsoever can be accepted for any errors or consequences arising therefrom.

Entries are based upon information provided directly by or derived from the websites of the shops concerned and, in the case of Booksellers Association (BA) members, from the BA Members Directory (used with permission). Each shop or business listed is responsible for ensuring that its own listing is kept up to date.

No endorsement of any business listed is implied. Any relationship or transaction established between you and any business listed exists only between you and that business: it is your responsibility to satisfy yourself that the business meets your requirements.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Info, Services

Tagged , , ,

A Very Happy Christmas to all this Blog’s Friends and Supporters

Posted on December 24, 2008 by | 3 Comments
Get the Goat this Christmas

Get the Goat this Christmas

Every year I’ve taken to buying a goat from World Vision instead of sending Christmas cards to my online friends and supporters. This year is no exception: you’ll find the official e-card here.

Thank you for your support and friendship through the past year.

A very Happy Christmas to you all, and my very best wishes for the year to come.

A Request

I’m sharing this year’s goat with the SPCK/SSG Bloggers. I hope most of you are familiar with the SPCK/SSG situation: it’s taken up a lot of my time this year, time that would most likely have otherwise been spent on developing UKCBD and this blog. I make no apology for that, but I do regret the need for it.

The only thing needed for evil to succeed is for those who know better to do nothing. Make no mistake about it: the Brewers are evil men. They took SPCK on trust and they have violated that trust: they have betrayed employees and suppliers. They have attempted to stifle free speech. They have reneged on a covenant, a covenant that they freely entered into and signed in the presence of a witness, to maintain shops as outlets for Christian literature. They have attempted a fraudulent bankruptcy filing on the USA courts. Their treatment of their employees has driven at least one man to a nervous breakdown; another committed suicide. All of these points are matters of public record and can be independently verified.

Yet they continue to operate so-called ‘Christian’ bookshops around the UK whilst people who should know better continue to trade with them, supplying them with books and other products that enable them to continue their devious business practices.

So to my request: please show your support for and solidarity with the former SPCK/SSG employees and suppliers who have not been paid — whose Christmas celebrations are blighted because of the Brewers — by reading and signing the two petitions to rescue the Durham and Chichester shops from the Brewers:

If you have already signed those petitions, thank you. Please spread the word and ask your colleagues and friends to read and sign them too.

Luke’s account of the nativity includes these words from Mary:

The Lord has performed mighty deeds with his arm; 
he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. 
He has brought down rulers from their thrones 
but has lifted up the humble. 
He has filled the hungry with good things 
but has sent the rich away empty. 

Let’s make 2009 the year in which workers and suppliers are paid and in which the Brewers are brought down, brought to book for their crimes and sent away empty.

Thank you.

→ 3 Comments

Posted in Announcements

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Range, Availability and Convenience: Eden’s Challenge to Christian Bookshops

Posted on October 2, 2008 by | 6 Comments

In a Press Release issued on 1st October 2008 [1] — full copy below — Gareth Mulholland of Eden.co.uk has thrown down a gauntlet to bricks and mortar Christian retailers:

‘Range’, ‘Availability’ and ‘Convenience’ are the top three reasons that customers say they now shop with Eden.co.uk instead of their local Christian Bookshop. This is contrary to the popular opinion that ‘price’ is the primary concern.

It’s a challenge that those of us running local Christian bookshops cannot afford to ignore, but at the same time it presents a dilemma for those who have concerns about doctrinal and theological issues. This blog’s all time most visited post is “Christian Bookshops — who needs them?” where the criticisms levelled against Christian bookshops seem to come down to two extremes: either they stock too narrow a range or they stock too broad a range… Go figure! For others, however, price really is the issue and they will shop around for the cheapest possible deal.

All three — range, availability and convenience — are, however, areas in which Eden only has the cutting edge if we give it to them. Range is largely a question of perception: a website is infinitely expandable whereas a bricks and mortar store has physical limits; but there’s no reason why we can’t display publishers’ brochures, catalogues and flyers; or why we can’t use online services to display the broader range of stock we can order on request.

Availability is only an issue if we’re incompetent or short staffed: at LST I only have physical space for around 2,000 titles; but hundreds of thousands of other titles are available for next day delivery from STL or Gardners; many more are available within 3 to 5 days via PubEasy or direct from the publishers; and a massive range is available from STL USA within a week. My constant battle is unpacking the boxes and processing goods in as fast as my suppliers deliver them…

As for convenience: what could be more convenient than walking out of the shop with a book in your hand? Than placing an order at 3pm and receiving an email at 11am the next day to say that your book is in? No need to wait around for the postman or courier: that’s all taken care of for you… and with so much less stress on the environment: none of the wastage involved in having each book individually wrapped and delivered. In these days of increasing environmental awareness we’d do well to emphasise our green credentials.

Meanwhile it seems that Eden have a distinctly unfair advantage with backing and funding for their expansion from the Welsh Development Agency… 

Press Release dated 1 September 2008: [1]

CHRISTIAN BOOK SALES UP 75% AT EDEN.CO.UK
Momentum builds with support from the Welsh Development Agency

Eden.co.uk has announced that book sales in September were up 75% on last year and that the company is on course to hit a target of 100% annual growth by the end of its financial year in January.

Gareth Mulholland, Managing Director, expects a surge of customers shopping online for the very first time between now and Christmas. “Our rate of growth is actually accelerating so our targets and plans are being rewritten. We are preparing to dispatch over 1000 book orders a day during peak periods in November and December.”

Fast growth can be difficult for small businesses but Eden is being supported by the Welsh Development Agency who have already provided grants towards training and development. The WDA is part-funding an intense period of business planning with the School of Management at Cranfield University, meanwhile another significant investment from the WDA is expected in early 2009 to develop new sales channels for christian books in the UK.

“Last July we moved into new premises on the other side of Chester and we are now ten metres over the border into Wales. The Welsh Development Agency has recognised our potential and is helping to ensure our growth and stability by providing us financial support along with experienced ‘mentors’ from leading businesses in North Wales.”

‘Range’, ‘Availability’ and ‘Convenience’ are the top three reasons that customers say they now shop with Eden.co.uk instead of their local Christian Bookshop. This is contrary to the popular opinion that ‘price’ is the primary concern.

Note
[1] Although the press release is dated 1 September 2008, it was released on 1 October 2008:
Eden.co.uk: Press Release 01/10/2008 (pdf, 56kb)

→ 6 Comments

Posted in News

Tagged ,

The Dave Walker Reposts

Posted on August 3, 2008 by | 3 Comments

UKCBD > Christian Book Reviews > Arts & Media > The Dave Walker Reposts

The Dave Walker RepostsThe Dave Walker Reposts 
May 2006 – July 2008

Dave Walker and Matt Wardman (Ed) 
ISBN: (N/A) 
The Wardman Wire, 2008 (130pp) 
Free Download

Category: Arts & Media 
Reviewed by: Phil Groom

Sometimes things don’t work out as planned, even for highly placed business men and lawyers. Taken largely from the “Save the SPCK” pages on Dave Walker’s The Cartoon Blog, this publication reveals the sad and sorry story of the demise of the SPCK Bookshops following their handover to SSG, the Society of St Stephen the Great, in 2006 — and ends abruptly with a note from Dave dated July 8th 2008 on his silence following the tragic suicide of Steve Jeynes, former manager of the SPCK/SSG bookshop in Worcester.

Or rather, I should say that silence from Dave seems to be where Mr J Mark Brewer (co-owner of the bookshops with his brother, Philip) wanted it to end. Unfortunately, Dave’s not the silent type: he kept on blogging, in his own quirky way, telling the story, reporting evenhandedly and watching with astonishment as the Brewers’ business strategy fell apart.

Trouble is, Dave’s not an especially noisy guy either: he’s a cartoonist who expresses himself in pictures. He doesn’t shout or scream. So when Mr J Mark Brewer sent Dave a “Demand to Cease and Desist” — which if it was anything like the one he sent me was full of self-righteous indignation, allegations and threats of legal action — Dave backed down.

This proved, in retrospect, to be the best move that Dave could have made: the blogosphere exploded with indignation as “Of Course I Could Be Wrong” blogger, MadPriest, declared war by launching a campaign to send Dave Walker solidarity messages to Mr Brewer whilst fellow Anglican priest Sam Norton retrieved some of Dave’s missing posts from Google’s cache and reposted them on his own site.

Alongside this, political blogger Matt Wardman — who compiled and published this report — launched an ongoing and growing campaign in defence of Dave’s right to free speech, whilst Unity, a self-proclaimed “big bad atheist blogger with a penchant for digging into the detail” has been systematically taking Mr Brewer, his business dealings and his correspondence to pieces on his blog, Ministry of Truth. For a more comprehensive round-up of blogs and others picking up on this situation see the Wardman Wire My Name is Dave Walker post index.

Enough by way of introduction, however. Perhaps the best snapshot summary of Dave’s posts has been given by blogger Exigency In Specie:

When you read the posts, Dave spent a good deal of time trying to moderate those reactions in order to thoughtfully report events that he believed should be of concern to a wider audience. As a relatively high profile site he primarily acted as a central resource for collecting together information from the geographically diverse chain. Care in what was written was uppermost, even when emotions grew – you can easily find points where he calls for cool heads, and where he removed comments that he himself deemed were close to the line.

From: Learning the Lessons, 30/07/2008

My own reading concurs: Dave is no irresponsible or reckless blogger. Which begs the question, why the heavy handed intervention?

Dave’s last SPCK related post appears on p.113. Then follow several pages of

These appended articles can be read online, of course, but I’d recommend downloading the entire document (pdf, 2.3MB), either here or from The Wardman Wire and reading it at your leisure.

As you read it, please be sure to send us your comments and feedback. If you run your own blog, please remember that it could be you being chased by angry lawyers next time. Please don’t sit back and hope it doesn’t happen to you: blog the story, join the fight and spread the word. And pray. Pray for the ex-SPCK booksellers whose lives have been wrecked by this fiasco. Pray for those of us standing with them. Please pray for Mr Brewer: despite all he’s said and done, nobody wants to vilify him, I hope: that’s emphatically not what this is about; but I would like to see some justice for these booksellers, and I would like him to respond in a more civil way than we’ve seen thus far.

Finally, when you come across some of the funnier stuff, do have a laugh. Remember, Dave Walker is a humourist.

You’ll find continuous updates in the SPCK/SSG: News, Notes & Info blog. Thanks for reading…

Phil Groom, August 2008

Phil Groom is this site’s Webmaster and Reviews Editor. He’s a regular contributor to Christian Marketplace magazine and is the manager of London School of Theology Books & Resources. Any opinions expressed here are personal and should not be taken as representing the views of London School of Theology or of any other group or organisation.

The Wardman Wire: Dave Walker Archives

The Wardman Wire

Authors | Categories | Publishers | Reviewers | Titles

→ 3 Comments

Posted in Book Reviews

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

March of the Clones

Posted on June 17, 2008 by | 4 Comments

I’m sure it isn’t really a St Andrew’s Bookshops internet takeover bid, but somehow, looking at these, I can’t help wondering…

It’s not the “March of the Clones” effect that bothers me so much, however, as the use of the same “keywords” over and over again across the top and bottom of every page using the St Andrew’s template: 

Across the top: “Online Christian Bookshop Buy Christian Books Online Bibles Christian Resources Christian Music CD”

Across the bottom: “Online Christian Bookshop selling Christian books, Holy Bibles, Christian resources, Christian music, Christian CDs, Christian DVDs, Bible Commentaries, Bible Study material Christian Bookshop”

Behind the scenes it’s more of the same, each page I checked across the various sites using the same META description: 

<meta name="description" content="Christian Bookshop offering 
Christian Books, CDs, DVDs, Videos, Bibles and Books about
Christianity and Christian Living both online and in our various
branches in the United Kingdom">

So, some words to the wise: use the META description and keyword tags and attributes intelligently to describe your page contents; and don’t use “keyword stuffing” techniques, either in your META tags or in your page content. It doesn’t fool the search engines: on the contrary, it might just get you blacklisted instead of higher ranked. See Google’s warnings about Keyword Stuffing for more info and clarification.

One thing we can be absolutely certain about: using exactly the same sequence of “keywords” on every page across an entire site — let alone the same sequence across several supposedly independent sites! — renders them meaningless. Think of it like prayer: meaningless repetition doesn’t work with God, and it doesn’t work with Google either. To be effective and meaningful, keywords need to be specific to each page’s content.

 

→ 4 Comments

Posted in Advice, Bookshop Ramblings

Tagged , , , ,

Christian Bookshops — who needs them?

Posted on May 20, 2008 by | 33 Comments

That, I think, is the essence of the question posed by Eddie Arthur in response to my post about Core Stock yesterday:

Why should I buy books from you (or another Christian bookshop) when I can get them from Amazon at a significant discount?

Eddie admits to playing devil’s advocate in posing the question, but even so it’s a question that all booksellers — not just Christian booksellers — are acutely aware of; and if we want to survive, we need to tackle it. But for me, it’s about more than survival: I believe Christian bookshops have a vital role to play in Christian mission — as I observed a couple of posts back, a Christian bookshop is much more than just another business.

But not everyone, it seems, is convinced. In April I responded to Bill Kahusac praying for a Christian bookshop to be closed down and since then I’ve come across several others who don’t like what they’re finding. Phil Whittall — co-owner of Illuminate, Shrewsbury — posed essentially the same question as Eddie at the end of last year, albeit from the other side of the fence:

… do you buy from your local Christian bookshop? If not why not? If so why? Is the lowest price everything when shopping online? Is the presence of a Christian retailer on the high street something to be desired or not?

He received several responses: they’re all worth reading, but this, from Matthew Hosier, was perhaps the most telling:

… I have had a generous book allowance at the church I have been leading, but have spent it almost exclusively at Amazon. My reasons? 1. Yes, it is cheaper. 2. Yes, it is easier. 3. My local Wesley Owen doesn’t often carry the books I want.

Reason 3. is really the deal breaker. I’m sure Illuminate is different, but too often I find Christian bookshops very depressing – either they are dust-filled and stock little but browning copies of 1970s paperbacks, or their stock is all kitten posters, olive wood trinkets, and books reflecting the broadcasting schedule of the God Channel. For this reason, if anything I have actually discouraged people from shopping at these outlets.

Now that truly is depressing. Almost as depressing as being a web server trying to serve a missing page. And it’s a parallel problem: if we’re not delivering the content people are looking for — content that church leaders such as Matthew feel confident enough about to be able to recommend our shops to their congregations — then perhaps we do have our backs to the wall.

Or do we? Is that why we’re there, to serve the local churches? Or are we there to serve the local community as resource centres for their spiritual lives? Or are we simply there on a par with every other business, competing to make a profit? Can we do all three — serve the local churches, serve the local community and make a profit?

For Christian bookshops profit isn’t — or shouldn’t be — our driving force: we are called be a prophetic presence on the high street, not simply another profiteering one. And for that we need churches behind us, supporting us as part of their mission strategy, helping us to reach out to our communities, to be places where people asking questions about spirituality and faith can make their first tentative steps.

We exist to serve God’s kingdom: Amazon exists to make money.

That’s the difference and that’s why I say you should buy from us, Eddie. You too, Bill; and you, Matthew. We also need your help to become the places you’d like us to be. If you visit a Christian bookshop and don’t like what you find or can’t find what you want, don’t just walk away or go to Amazon: talk to us. You have a vision for God’s kingdom: so do we. Let’s work together.

Unless, of course, getting books at the lowest possible price really is the only thing you’re interested in…

Related Discussions

Lessons from America

The Christian bookstore remains important because it keeps publishers in tune with their customers.

Verne Kenney, Vice President of Sales, Zondervan
Cited in Christianity Today, How to Save the Christian Bookstore

→ 33 Comments

Posted in Bookshop Ramblings

Tagged , , , ,