25 Trends in Publishing: General Market Crossover

About the column: A handful of agents and interns who work with Cyle have learned the latest and (sometimes so, sometimes not so) greatest trends in publishing right now. Tune in each week to find out what’s trending, ranging from ABA to CBA, children’s to adult. The authors of these columns have included social media tags at the end to keep up with trends they are finding. They can also be found here. 

Trend #16 of 25: General Market Crossover

Contributor: Hope Bolinger

If writers had struggled to break into the Christian market before, the window has narrowed evermore with time.

With a limited readership and limited genres thriving in the CBA market (Amish fiction, for instance), Christian publishers have shifted their focus to titles that can grab the attention of a general market audience.

What does this mean?

Essentially, it all starts with a walk in your local bookstore. All the general market titles take up 90 percent of the store. And in the back corner, a single bookshelf holds all the Christian titles. Christian companies want to expand past the one-bookshelf approach. How? By making their books more palatable for the general market. This means taking out all the Christianese, the deus ex machina conversions, and any one-dimensional characters (good or evil).

In essence, they want clean books with good Christian morals. Just maybe not ones that thwack readers over the head with a Bible.

Why the shift away from overtly Christian content?

If a book preaches at the readers (Christian or non-Christian), it tends to isolate them.

Even with the typical problems that arise in some of these titles aside, Christian publishers want something fresh that can grab the attention of new readers. At the moment, they want books that could be picked up by any reader, Christian or non-Christian, and deemed an excellent book. In content, in morals, and in character.

In essence, they want good writing that can reach a lot of people.

If you happen to have a title that fits more CBA than CBA/ABA crossover, consider what ways you can morph it to make it applicable to both markets. Does the plot skirt around difficult issues? Are the antagonists non-Christians and the protagonists Christians? If so, do all your characters (believers or not) struggle with flaws and have redeemable facets?

Hope Bolinger works as a literary agent at C.Y.L.E. IlluminateYA contracted her YA novel Den while she still attended college (to be released June 3, 2019).

More than 200 of her works have been featured in various publications. She has received various writing awards from being a finalist in the Jerry B. Jenkins short story contest to her one-act earning second place in the Searchlight Playwriting Contest. She has served in various publishing capacities from working at newspapers, magazines, and publishing houses.

She can be found at hopebolinger.com.