Mark Kuyper and I are going to talk. I sent him a few more things to think about before we get together by phone. Didn't want to bother you - surprised you can find time to read all the traffic on your blog. Meanwhile, I'm helping to plan a national seminar on self-publishing, a seminar for writers at the Great American Bargain Book Show in Boston in August and trying to help Clark Atlanta University launch a new TV show on books and authors - initially via Comcast to Atlanta metroplex, but already being test-marketed for digital streaming internationally. Also just posted a story on my Energy Pipeline News blog about how Goldman Sachs, Citibank and Merrill Lynch last summer manipulated the crude oil futures market, driving the price of crude oil to $147/bbl. in order to drive SemGroup into bankruptcy and pick clean the bones. Highest traffic I've had at that site since I ran a story about how KBR Halliburton failed to inform U.S. soldiers protecting it in Iraq that they were being exposed to hexavalent chromium - the bad stuff that got Erin Brokovich angry. Brings back memories of my early days as an investigative reporter in Chicago.

I think Thomas Nelson is on the right track by downplaying its presence at ICRS. ICRS, in my experience, has behaved as a moribund, exclusionary show that goes out of its way to roadblock rather than invite participation by exhibitors. I think CBA is stuck in a 20th century mentality, when the industry is experiencing sea changes not unlike those that dislocated monks and scrolls when Gutenberg introduced movable type. Indie booksellers now have only eight percent of the overall $32 billion book retail market. Christian booksellers have a small slice of the indie market. As for diagnosing the reason for low attendance by consumers in Dallas, I'm still waiting for information that will help me in writing an article about the show for the Southern Review of Books, of which I am the editor.