Last week, FrugalDad published an amazing graphic about Amazon. Since 1994, Jeff Bezos, the CEO, has steadily grown the company. I knew it was big, but I had no idea how big.

This infographic is worth studying in detail. No author, retailer, or publisher can afford to ignore this behemoth. (Don’t miss the question at the end. Please leave a comment! I’d like to know what you think.)

Over the past few months, I have been doing a lot of thinking about reading—particularly about reading books. This was brought to my attention again last week when I interviewed Dr. Ben Carson for a series of video broadcasts on the topic of leadership, which I did for the Chick-fil-A Leadercast.

Since Google introduced its Book Search program, we have been fielding questions from authors and agents. They are concerned that Google has scanned their books and the results are showing up in Google search. The primary concern is that consumers will not buy books because. Why? Two reasons:

I have spent the last three days at the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference in New York. This conference is designed to address the issues related to publishing and technology. This was my second year to attend. Five of my colleagues from Thomas Nelson accompanied me.

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.

Last week Amazon.com, Walmart.com, and Target.com embarked in an online price war over the pre-sale of new hardcover, bestselling books. While the retail price for these books is typically $25–35, all three of these retailers are selling them for between $8.98 and $9.00.

Thirty years ago, when I first got into the book publishing business, it was an elitist occupation. Publishers met in smoke-filled board rooms and made decisions about what the reading public should read. It never occurred to them to ask the readers themselves.

However, as the new marketing director for a fairly successful imprint, I didn’t know any better. I naively decided to conduct a consumer research project. I wanted to know more about what influenced readers to buy our books. Was it an advertisement for the book, an interview with the author, merchandising in the store, or perhaps the simple recommendation of a friend? It seemed like an obvious question.

Today is the first day of our 2010 fiscal year at Thomas Nelson. It is our 212th year in business. It is a day full of new beginnings and possibilities. As I thought about that today, I thought it might be good to take a quick look at the past as we prepare for the future.

Thomas Nelson’s Gaelic ancestors had a popular proverb: “Cuimhnich air na daoine o’n d’thainig thu.” It means, “Remember the people from whom you have come.” This is a wise and powerful saying. It is often forgotten in our modern world that places such a high value on everything new and shiny. But remembering our ancestors often provides a treasure-trove of resources for meeting the challenges of today.

Our company began in Scotland with the birth of Thomas Neilson [sic] in 1780. Though his parents were farmers, he developed an interest in printing, the most high-tech industry of the 18th century. As a result, his parents sent him to London to become an apprentice in a print shop on Paternoster Row, which was kind of the Silicon Valley of the Day.

Today I announced a few changes in our leadership structure. These changes are designed to better leverage my strengths and also make our team more nimble and competitive in the current economy.

Yesterday, I received my copy of the Amazon Kindle 2 [affiliate link]. Gail and I are on vacation, so I had them send it to me here. I figured this would be good time to get acquainted with the new device, before I head back to the hustle and bustle of work. In this video, I unbox the Kindle 2 and share my first impressions.

I hear publishers and booksellers complaining all the time about how bad the book publishing industry is. Gas prices are up. Retail traffic is down. Books are simply not moving. One pundit remarked, “Flat is the new up.” Evidently, Dwight Baker and his team at Baker Publishing Group didn’t get the memo.

For the fiscal year ending April 30, 2008, Baker reported sales up 16% to $57.9. Yes, they had a huge hit with 90 Minutes in Heaven, but, according to Dwight, their sales growth was “much more comprehensive” than this one title. In fact, the company experienced growth in all divisions: Revell was up 26%; Chosen, 25%; Baker Books, 15%; Baker Academic, 13%; Brazos, 10%, and Bethany House, 9%.

My post, Too Many Books, Too Few Shelves, raised a lot of great questions about how we determine what we publish at Thomas Nelson. Therefore, I would like to address a persistent issue that was raised in the comments section of that post.

If we can’t stop the presses, we should at least slow them down. U.S. publishers produced almost 300,000 new titles last year, a number that Sara Nelson of Publishers Weekly referred to as “a ridiculous number.”

With bookstore sales rising a modest 3.6% in the last five years, we have more and more books competing for what amounts to the same exact shelf space. Clearly, something is wrong.

The Amazon Kindle has sparked (pun intended) a great deal of debate. It seems that people either love it or hate it. Me? I’m probably somewhere in the middle. Despite its obvious shortcomings, I think it’s a giant step forward, and I want to see it succeed.

But I think the device has a ways to go before it creates the kind of seismic shift that the iPod created in the music world. In order for an eBook to succeed, it must incorporate four essential components. I have listed these in priority order.

The book, as we know it today, will eventually die. It won’t happen all at once. And it won’t happen immediately. But, in my opinion, it is inevitable. Why? One word: efficiency.

The essence of technology is that it makes things more and more efficient. It automates processes—or completely eliminates them. As it does so, it takes costs out of the system. Once it is unleashed, it generally can’t be stopped.

Since I wrote my initial post last night, Amazon’s Kindle page has gone live. If you don’t do anything else, go to the page and watch the basic intro video. (If you scroll down, you’ll see a larger version of the intro video.) It looks even more interesting than I thought. It has certainly come a long way since I first saw the device 18 months ago.

As of today, Thomas Nelson has 668 titles available for Kindle download. Bob Edington, our VP of Internet Sales, tells me that many, many more are on their way. (Evidently, Amazon is trying to catch up with the backlog.) Just to put this into perspective, Zondervan, the second largest publisher in our space, has 53 titles. Tyndale, the third largest publisher in our space, has 57.

According to a new Newsweek report, entitled The Future of Reading, Amazon will introduce a device this week that could usher in the long-awaited ebook revolution. It is called the Amazon Kindle, named to evoke the crackling ignition of knowledge.

According to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos (pictured above),

This is the most important thing we’ve ever done…. It’s so ambitious to take something as highly evolved as the book and improve on it. And maybe even change the way people read.