Guest Blogger: The ECPA Winners
Our guest blogger today is Cindy Carter, the Recognition and Resources Manager for the ECPA…
Thank you, Chip, for allowing me the opportunity to be a guest blogger on your site and to introduce your readers to the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association [ECPA].
ECPA (Evangelical Christian Publishers Association) is the trade association for Christian publishers with nearly 150 members worldwide. It is our mission to equip the Christian publishing industry with programs and services that enable them to more efficiently and effectively “make the Christian message more widely known.” Our programs aim to build industry awareness, and to enhance ECPA members’ access to markets, education, expertise, information and peers.
One of the ways that ECPA builds awareness of quality Christian literature, is through the annual Christian Book Award program, which recognizes and promotes the year’s finest Christian titles in six categories. Here are the 2010 winners:
Christian Book of the Year: The Hole in Our Gospel
by Richard Stearns (Thomas Nelson)
Bibles: Glo by Immersion Digital (Zondervan)
Bible Reference: The New Moody Atlas of the Bible by Barry Beitzel (Moody Publishers)
Children & Youth: B4UD8 by Hayley and Michael DiMarco (Revell/ Baker Publishing Group)
Christian Life: The Hole in Our Gospel by Richard Stearns (Thomas Nelson)
Fiction: Watch Over Me by Christa Parrish (Bethany House/ Baker Publishing Group)
Inspiration & Gift: Grace Notes by Philip Yancey (Zondervan)
This collection of six books represents the industry's ‘best of the year’ and the program’s retail partners have agreed to promote them to their consumer bases.
60; Those partners include Christianbook.com, Berean, Family, and Parable, along with Amazon, Borders and Barnes & Noble. I highly recommend that you consider these titles for your personal reading and for gift giving.
ECPA also recognizes and celebrates the impact of Christian titles through our Gold, Platinum and Diamond Sales Award program by honoring titles that have sold 500,000 (Gold), 1 million (Platinum) and 10 million (Diamond) copies. In addition, each month, ECPA produces the industry’s BestSellers List. The top selling titles overall, as well as in fiction, non-fiction, Bibles, Children, Young Adult, Under $5, and Bible Translations are posted each month on our website, www.ecpa.org. If you would like to receive this list by email, contact Michael Covington (mcovington@ecpa.org) in our office with your email address and he will add you to the monthly distribution list.
Of worthwhile mention to all of you authors gleaning expert information from Chip's excellent blog, is about ECPA's online manuscript program. As a non-profit, service organization striving to meet our members’ needs, ECPA was asked to design an online manuscript submission service to enable our member publishers to efficiently review manuscript proposals from unsolicited authors. This resulted inChristianManuscriptSubmissions.com [CMS], which allows ECPA member publishers secure access to a vast database of manuscript proposals. Publishers contact authors directly to discuss a contract. In addition, ChristianManuscriptSubmissions.com serves as a resource to aspiring authors by posting information about upcoming Writers Conferences, author education blogs and information (including Chip’s blog here and Mike Hyatt's blog), and services for authors such as Wildfire Marketing and our partner BelieversPress, to provide editorial and marketing resources and assistance.
These are only a few programs that ECPA is involved with to equip the Christian publishing industry to “make the Christian message more widely known.” To learn more about ECPA and all of its programs, visit www.ecpa.org. And feel free to contact me for further information at ccarter@ecpa.org.
Cindy Carter