Clawing Up the Mountain of Misinformation

It turns out, the same day Chip MacGregor posted his interview with Dave Horton of Bethany House, INFUZE Magazine posted an article by Nathan Lambes about Christian speculative fiction.

While I agree with Mr. Lambes’ conclusion, he said some things in the article that I think need to be countered. It is in the endless repetition of false ideas that impressions are built or cemented in the minds of readers (who happen to also be the book buyers) and acquisition editors and marketing execs.

Here’s the first statement.

And while the genre has arguably been around since Milton and Bunyan, Christian speculative fiction isn’t selling as well as the work of those two men. And while the writings of C.S. Lewis and Tolkien are in vogue, the more recent works of Karen Hancock and Kathy Tyers stay untouched on their shelves.

First, I seriously doubt that Milton and Bunyan are selling particularly well these days! Sure, they have the standing as classics and many students still read them, but as pleasure reading? I doubt it. However, the worst part of the statement is the latter—that Karen Hancock and Kathy Tyers “stay untouched on their shelves.” That’s just plain not true. Would Bethany contract Karen Hancock for another series of books if her earlier ones were “untouched on their shelves”?

I did a little research to see what the current status of those books is at Amazon. Yes, I know some insiders claim Amazon isn’t an accurate way to measure the success of a book. But by using Title Z, you can see the lifetime ranking of a book, and there has been research to show what those numbers mean. From “What’t a Good Sales Rank”:

Less than 100: Best-seller. Author, publisher, agent are all getting rich
101-1000: Extremely good performer. Any publisher/author would be thrilled.
1001-10,000: Very successful book. A few of these can sustain a small publishing company.
10,001-50,000: A successful book by most industry standards.
50,001-100,000: Not bad.
100,000 – 500,000: Not good.
500,000 or more: Poor.

Admittedly, Kathy Tyers’ Firebird-A Trilogy, with a current ranking of 141,000, is selling in the Not Good range, but then the book is four years old. Karen Hancock, on the other hand, has four titles currently within or hovering near the “successful book” ranking, while the lifetime (the average includes the months Amazon listed them before release) of the books is just outside the Not bad rating.

Clearly, someone is “touching” these books.

Personal anecdote. In 2004, after discovering Light of Eidon, I requested our church librarian purchase the book. She did. Without me making any other request, she proceeded to purchase the other books in the Guardian-King series. I can only suppose that other readers of the first book requested the next ones in the series, because certainly there aren’t dollars to waste in our church library budget for books no one wants to read.

But back to the INFUZE article. I noticed that Mr. Lambes didn’t mention any of the newer authors. How does he explain the incontrovertible success of Donita Paul, Wayne Batson, Bryan Davis?

But there’s more.

The second function is of an evangelistic nature. These are the Christian novels that cross over into the secular mainstream and preach loud the gospel of Christ. One doesn’t have to think hard to call up images of the Left Behind frenzy from a scant few years ago.

I won’t go into another of my rants right now, but it is apparent that Mr. Lambes, like so many writers, doesn’t understand that fiction can have a Christian theme without having an “evangelistic” purpose and without “preaching loud” the gospel of Christ. Ironically he says the alternative is to make the message so obscure no one gets it.

simply by merit of going through a Christian publisher such as Tyndale, Westbow, or Bethany House one is almost doomed to a presence on only the shelves of Christian bookstores, limiting evangelistic potency. Add this to the fact that the Christian thematic elements in Christian speculative fiction are either too overt to be palatable by a non-believing audience or too vague to have an impact and you have a genre that is effectively evangelistically neutered.

First, I wonder if Mr. Lambes has looked for any Christian fantasy in Borders or Barnes and Noble of late. Wayne Batson just posted about his book signing in Texas at a HUGE Borders. And if memory serves me correctly, the Fantasy Four Tour included a number of not-Christian bookstores. However, in response to the point of the quote, my question is, do readers have any confusion about what Herman Melville believes about God after finishing Moby Dick? Why is it that a non-Christian can write using symbols and types that are not misunderstood, but somehow a Christian doing so is considered to be doing just a self-sacrifice story like so many other writers? OK, the rant is rising up, so I’ll move on. 😉

Here’s a statement in the article, I just don’t understand. Perhaps one of you can enlighten me.

Christian speculative fiction is by Christians, for Christians. While I’m sure any author would love to have their stories read and appreciated by a secular audience, the price they would have to pay to make them appealing to that group would be too high.

What price is he referring to—the watering down of the Christian themes? I suppose that’s it, but I completely disagree. The price we have to pay to have a secular audience read our stories is to write good ones, engaging ones that anyone will love. Look at Narnia. Not only Christians read Narnia. How many non-Christians came to an understanding of what Jesus did at the cross because of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? It’s an indeterminate number, but that doesn’t mean it is a non-existent group. And this would not happen if those people found a bad story. The story has to be well crafted, which means the theme also must be well crafted.

Is the price of writing good stories too high? I’ll admit, sometimes it feels very high. Sometimes I wish I could settle for something that would be a guaranteed sale or that I could actually finish, no matter if the work has some snags here and there! 😮 Writing epic fantasy while you’re trying to learn to write fiction is not a path I recommend to ANYONE!

In the end, though, I don’t believe God calls writers to anything short of writing the best “good stories” we’re capable of.

Let me get to the conclusion of the article:

Positive word of mouth is a huge factor in the success of a book, and in this case, the word isn’t being spread. And since we’re already talking about a small market that’s having problems raising money, it doesn’t have the funding to help get that word around through conventional advertisement.

Well, again he’s missed the point—the Fantasy Four Tour this past summer, CSFF Blog Tours, Latest In Spec, the Lost Genre Guild, Where the Map Ends, Christian Fandom, Spec Faith—these and many other efforts ARE making a difference … or Reuters wouldn’t be interviewing Wayne Batson and Christopher Hopper.

In the end it is up to the readers to decide. It’s survival of the fittest out here.

And with this statement, I agree. Which is why I am holding the Fantasy Challenge II. Readers need to let their friends know what books they like and should buy, and they need to tell their bookstores what books they should put on their shelves. In the end—on the human level, at least—it does boil down to us buying books.