In Christian Retailing's latest Vital Signs survey, 48% of supplier employees and 41% of retail workers said they were not sure if they would still have their jobs by year's end.

During Saturday morning's Joint Publisher Fiction Showcase, sponsored by the Christy Awards, a panel of best-selling authors explained their craft to a full room of more than 100 participants and answered questions from the audience. Panelists included Terri Blackstock, T. Davis Bunn, Mindy Starns Clark, Jerry Jenkins, Beverly Lewis, Robert Liparulo, Bill Myers and Janette Oke. Liz Curtis Higgs served as moderator.

The March 20-22 event, sponsored by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA), boasted a roster of more than 220 Christian authors participating in a range of events intended to generate exposure for the Christian book industry.

Chris Conver, a trade and academic sales representative for Westminster John Knox Press, said although it was "hard to measure" whether or not the event had been worth it for the company-due to contacts made for future purchases-his booth's total sales for the weekend were "less than $1,000."

As the three-day, consumer-oriented event closed yesterday, organizers released attendance numbers of a little more than 1,500 registered attendees, including 275 children who were given free registrations. The total was just a fraction of the number originally anticipated.

The International Management Training Forum was held in the Dallas Convention Center, bringing together 30 representatives from as far afield as Brazil, China, Korea, Sweden, Denmark, Scotland and France.