Every month, I review a set of market share reports prepared by one of our internal analysts. While the data behind these reports are not perfect, I do believe they represent the best view of the book publishing market currently available. As a result, even though it’s been almost two years since I posted a high-level summary of the data, I thought it would provide you with some insight into our industry.

Once a quarter, we pull all our Nashville-based employes together (about 400) for an all-company team meeting. Our goal is three-fold: to report on the previous quarter’s results, recognize outstanding performance, and preview our “coming attractions.”

We held this quarter’s meeting yesterday at The Donelson Fellowship, a church near our corporate headquarters. Rob Morgan, the pastor, and his gracious staff, have served as our hosts now for more than five years. Their facility is perfect for our size, with state-of-the-art audio-visual equipment.

Three years ago, we consolidated our twenty-one publishing imprints under one umbrella brand: “Thomas Nelson.” We believed then (as we believe now) so many imprints only served to dilute our brand, creating needless complexity and infrastructure for everyone.

At the time, we decided that we would go with our singular house logo on the spine. Believing that “less is more,” we took a page out of Apple and Nike’s playbook. No text. Not even a ® symbol to indicate a registered trademark. Just the house. Nothing more.

Last Friday, I spoke at the Music City Media Mixer, a luncheon sponsored by George Uribe and Ebie McFarland. I spoke on the topic of “The Importance of Building an Author Platform.” While my talk focused primarily on authors, the principles I shared apply to anyone trying to sell anything in today’s environment.

Building an author platform has never been more important. This is because of three realities author’s face today:

The International Christian Retail Show (ICRS) is going on this week in Denver. As long as I have been involved in the book industry, trade shows have been fertile ground for rumors. Usually, each trade show sports one BIG rumor and a lot of little ones. Despite the fact that most turn out to be false, they keep everyone entertained and make long days on the floor bearable.

Though we are not attending ICRS this year, evidently this year’s rumor is about Thomas Nelson. Supposedly, we are being sold or have already been sold. I hate to spoil anyone’s fun, but this is patently false. We are not being shopped or in discussions with potential buyers. As the company’s CEO, I should know.

Several years ago, I wanted to encourage our employees to blog. As a traditional book publishing company, I felt that we needed to experience new media if we were going to transition successfully to it. I still feel this way.

Initially, some people expressed interest. Others were reluctant. So, in order to encourage blogging, we created a simple set of guidelines to help our bloggers know what we expected. However, I noticed this week that these never made the transition to my new blog, which I launched a few months ago. So I thought I wold re-post them here.

Yesterday, I shared a major obstacle that I faced in my career. At the time, I thought it was insurmountable. I couldn’t see a way out. But then, amazingly, everything turned, and the situation worked to my advantage.

So often, this has been my experience. I could share with you one story after another. You probably could, too. The problem is that we forget that obstacles are a necessary part of achieving our vision.

In my experience, vision consists of five components:

In August of 2000, I received a big break in my career. However, as is so often the case, it came disguised as a seemingly insurmountable obstacle.

I had just become the publisher of Nelson Books, one of the two trade book imprints at Thomas Nelson at that time. I had inherited a division with a lot of financial problems. Based on almost every metric available, we were dead last compared to the company’s thirteen other publishing groups.

A while back, I received an email from one of our authors, notifying us that he had hired a new literary agent. My first thought was, You’ve got to be kidding! Of all the agents out there, why would you pick THAT one!

Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against agents. Not only was I a literary agent for six years, I have been represented by an agent on all of the books I have personally published. And, of course, as a publisher, I deal with agents on a daily basis.

In 30 years of book publishing I have heard it all. In the spring of 1987, I received a book proposal from a man who was predicting that the Rapture would happen before November (the 40-year anniversary of the founding of Israel).