In Depth
Gotta have faith
18.07.08 Tom Tivnan
“I don’t know if you noticed,” Wendy Grisham says, accentuating her accent, “but I’m not from around here.”
I have noticed; her honeyed, elongated vowels are pure Mississippi. Grisham, who has been Hodder Faith’s publishing director for a little over a year, is talking about the differences in religious publishing on both sides of the Atlantic. She knows both markets; she grew up in a Southern Baptist home in America’s deep south, yet found her personal faith, and established her publishing career, here in the UK.
“What I find really frustrating here,” she says, “is that when you go into the high street shops, the religious section is in the back corner of the back room. I want to bring in things that can be front-of-store; I don’t want to be in the religious section, I want to be in the bestseller section.”
She certainly has a great chance to hit the heights here, publishing in the UK this week one of the biggest US Christian publishing success stories. William P Young’s novel The Shack, published in 2007 by the author and two friends through their own company Windblown Media after it had been rejected by a number of US publishers, has been a word-of-mouth hit. Selling initially through churches, it has broken into the mainstream, shifting more than 1.6 million copies to date, with Windblown spending only $300 (£149) on marketing.
Grisham says she has never felt about a book the way she has with The Shack. She adds: “If I’m in a plane crash tomorrow and that’s it for me, I would have done what I have been put on this earth to do. I know that sounds really dramatic, and I’m not overly prone to dramatics. But it is just that important.”
The link-up with Windblown—Hodder Faith has not bought UK rights, but parent Hachette has entered into a co-venture with the company—is partly a move to reclaim some of Hodder & Stoughton’s early heritage as a Christian publisher. Hodder Faith was created in 2006, with non-Christian books moved to Hodder & Stoughton General. Earlier this year, the company lured Ian Metcalfe away from Collins Bibles to drive the imprint’s digital offer.
Metcalfe’s appointment, Grisham says, is part of an overall “high street-driven strategy” that also hopes to reinvigorate its core market: “I think Christian publishing has been tired in this country. A lot of jackets weren’t hip, they weren’t funky. I have the advantage of having a dedicated sales and marketing team that knows the market and can freshen things up.”
Grisham is related to that Grisham; her brother John is the bestselling novelist. While she is proud of John, she is at pains to say that she is equally proud of all her four siblings. Grisham grew up in a small town in Mississippi, just 20 miles from Memphis, Tennessee (“a stone’s throw from Elvis”). She studied at the University of Mississippi and later read English literature at the University of Warwick. That eventually led to a job in the rights department at Random House New York, later transferring back to the UK where she says she feels at home.
She rediscovered her Christian faith, which had lapsed, while living in London. That, in part, led her to join Christian publisher Alpha International as Europe, the Middle East and Africa publishing director. She stayed at Alpha for “three eye-opening years” until being poached by Hodder Faith.
She is certainly setting her sights high. She says: “When I left Alpha I met with one of the clergy on staff who gave me two challenges. One is to get Christian books in the high street in a big way. The other is to find the C S Lewis for the 21st century. Huge challenges, but I’m trying, I’m going for it.”
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