Religious publishing for the red state consumers and beyond

According to Borders spokeswoman Beth Bingham, "[The weekend the pope died], Borders sold triple the number of religious books that are normally sold on a weekend. ''~2 On Amazon.com's top 20 best-selling books list, six were by or about Pope John Paul II? According to Kelly Gallagher, ECPA vice president of marketing and technology, ECPA is presently capturing one-third of the stores in the industry, and of the most viable, they are capturing more than one-half. 33 The percent of the CBA market that ECPA claims to capture is debatable considering the CBA stores are closing rapidly and the marketplace is in constant flux. 34 The ECPA data is used to compile the CBA/ECPA bestseller lists which are published in CBA Marketplace and in Publishers Weekly. According to CBA market studies, the largest audience for religious books is typically married women between the ages of 35-50. According to the 2004 Gallup Poll What Readers Consider Extremely Important, "Strong Religious Faith" took the lion's share of the pie with 43%.