Christian Retailing

NRB features 'great involvement' from Christian publishers Print Email
Written by Eric Tiansay   
Tuesday, 26 March 2013 01:00 AM America/New_York

The National Religious Broadcasters' (NRB) 70th annual convention drew significant involvement from Christian publishers, according to organizers of the recent four-day event.

Held March 2-5 at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Hotel in Nashville, the event featured nine publishers exhibiting on the exposition floor compared to only six publishing houses in 2012.

"I think it's safe to say that we had a great deal of involvement from Christian publishers this year—perhaps even greater than previous years," NRB Director of Communications Kenneth Chan told Christian Retailing. "We had more than 20 authors holding book signings from the exposition floor.

"We also had more than 30 authors for the new authors and artists reception event," he added. "The area was packed with people. The media center was also bustling with almost non-stop interviews, many of which involved authors."

David C Cook Senior Publicity Manager Lisa Beech said the publisher brought Travis Thrasher, who wrote a novelization of Home Run, a faith-based movie scheduled to hit theaters April 19.

"We haven't brought authors that I know of for the past few years," she said. "Everyone seemed to be very excited about Home Run, both the movie and book. It was definitely worth sending Travis to do interviews."

Cook also gave away free copies of Cold Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels by J. Warner Wallace.

"The media was very interested and excited to hear the line up of current and new books coming from David C Cook," Beech said. "Relationships are priceless and any time we can come together and help each other meet goals, we don't want to pass up those opportunities like NRB allows."

Other publishers who came to the event included HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Harvest House Publishers, Moody Publishers and Tyndale House Publishers. Among the dozens of speakers at the convention were Tony Evans, Bobby Gruenewald, Tim Challies and Nick Hall, as well as social media representatives from Twitter, Google and Facebook.