The Religious Booksellers Trade Exhibit (RBTE) will be held next Tuesday through Friday at Pheasant Run Resort and Convention Center in St. Charles, IL. Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) explains what it’s all about:
Back when independent bookstores dotted the landscape like churches, religion publishers represented only a fraction of the overall number at ABA's annual trade show. Apart from a few large trade houses that published the occasional book in the category, publishers whose focus was religion had other avenues to reach their audience. Their primary sales channels were not trade bookstores but denominational or larger chain religion outlets or independent evangelical Christian stores....
Then, in the early to mid-1990s, America's interest in religion mushroomed, and religion publishers responded with books that ranged over diverse topics, from angels and pyramids to the debates between religion and science, new archeological discoveries, interreligious dialogue, critical readings of sacred texts, and the recovery of ancient religious traditions—not to mention faith-based fiction.
Burgeoning reader interest coincided with the rise of the chain bookstores that pushed many independents out of business, and religion publishers began to see what had by then become BEA as a way to reach a wider audience by expanding their sales and marketing channels to include general trade and chain bookstores, using the show to gain exposure and publicity as they moved into the retail mainstream.
UPDATE: See exhibit wrap-up coverage by Publishers Weekly, "Smaller Liturgical Booksellers Trade Show Hits 20 Years."
One of the featured titles at this year’s RBTE is the Common English Bible (@CommonEngBible & @VersesForToday), the newest translation by the largest number of biblical scholars & church leaders in words 21st century readers use every day, balancing academic rigor with modern understandability, proven through extensive field-testing with, and acting on feedback from, hundreds of readers. It’s the only Bible to include National Geographic maps and to extensively use contractions where the text warrants an engaging conversational style (not used in divine or poetic discourse). This translation is necessary to clearly communicate God’s Word because 9,000 new words & meaning revisions are added yearly to the English lexicon. Professional communicators (preachers, professors, speakers, leaders, etc.) who use this authoritative translation (not a paraphrase) will be great communicators, effectively reaching their audiences with biblical text their audiences readily understand because the text is written the way they naturally talk.