Happy New Year

Welcome back, BGs! I had a great blogging break over Christmas and New Years, but certainly not a writing break. In fact I even worked some on Christmas Day, plus all of New Years Eve and New Years day. Sheesh.

We had a great time with family in Idaho and returned to California on the 30th.

As I jogged by G.G. on New Years morning he was dressed in white shorts and a T shirt with "Happy 2008" in large green letters. Around his neck, a red lei. As usual, he was grinning. Looked to me like he's up to something in this new year.

And now--I have disappointing news for our industry. The CBA/ECPA talks to merge their data systems have failed. Sigh. Looks like no updated bestseller lists for us anytime soon. Here's the full story from PW:

After a year and a half of negotiations on combining their separate sales data-gathering systems for the Christian market, CBA (the association of Christian retailers) and the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, have announced the abandonment of that plan. A joint statement said, “The two associations had hoped to create a collaborative data flow agreement that would service both CBA’s CROSS:SCAN and ECPA’s PubTrack, but specific agreement details prevented final development of a workable joint business plan. Both CROSS:SCAN and PubTrack will continue serving their respective customers, and CBA and ECPA are committed to continued future collaboration.”

CBA president Bill Anderson cited the need to “honor existing contracts,” and ECPA president Mark Kuyper noted that “both parties invested tremendous time and energy into this process, and we’re disappointed that we weren’t able to create a viable business model.” Anderson declined to make himself available to answer questions about why the negotiations failed or who decided to end the talks, but Kuyper told RBL, “We discovered there was a component in the agreement that didn’t work for them and didn’t work for us, so the decision to walk away was mutual.” Kuyper would not identify that component.

CBA launched CROSS:SCAN in 2005 after retailers expressed fears that ECPA’s STATS (Sales Tracking Analysis Trends Summary)—since replaced by Pubtrack—was leaking information that might be used by competitors.

Also from PW--news that Greg Daniel, v-p and associate publisher at Thomas Nelson’s W Publishing imprint, is leaving the company on April 1 to found his own literary agency. Daniel Literary Group will be based in Nashville and will represent both CBA and ABA authors "across a variety of categories."

Now back to the new year. Anybody make any resolutions? I have an old one, and it's enough. Keep making the deadlines for these current contracts.