Religious Booksellers Trade Exhibit May 30-June 2

PW has two reports on the recent meeting of the Religious Booksellers Trade Exhibit in Ilinois one by Lynn Garrett and Joanna Riess. We lowly authors published by religious presses need to have an eye to such events. My favorite paragraph was at the end:-

Ave Maria Press author Sr. Anne Bryan Smollin (Live, Laugh and Be Blessed, Mar.) was a big hit at the Thursday luncheon, where she wowed the crowd with a hilarious stand-up comedy routine. Sr. Helen Prejean (Dead Man Walking, The Death of Innocents) delivered the keynote address at the Thursday evening banquet on the somber topic of opposing the death penalty. But afterwards she could be seen in the hotel's karaoke bar, enjoying a pint and leafing through the songbook in search of the right Beatles number. Also at her table was Sr. Joan Chittister (The Friendship of Women, RBL Q&A May 3), who joined Orbis Books marketing director Patti Byrns in singing a fist-pumping rendition of "I Am Woman," to the delight of RBTE-goers and the befuddlement of Smith Barney conventioneers also in the bar that night.

The second article reported that:
The show was buzzing about Davis Perkins's surprising jump from Presbyterian Publishing Corporation, where has worked for the past 18 years, to Church Publishing, the publishing arm of the Episcopal Church. As president and publisher at PPC since 1994, Perkins is credited with bringing financial stability and some high-profile authors to Westminster John Knox Press, its trade imprint. Both publishing houses were tight-lipped about the reasons for the change, with Perkins explaining in a press statement only that he feels "the need for a change."