In this brief, seven-minute video, I interview Allen Arnold, Senior Vice President and Publisher of Thomas Nelson’s fiction division. I have known Allen for almost 20 years. When I first met him, he was in marketing at Word, Inc., a company that Thomas Nelson eventually acquired.

Allen is one of the most creative people I know. He is truly a great publisher. He has that rare combination of being unwavering in his core values along with the ability to spot projects that have commercial potential. In his eight-year tenure as Nelson’s fiction publisher, he has built one of the company’s fastest-growing divisions and become an industry thought-leader at the same time.

This has been an incredibly busy week. On Monday, I announced that I was stepping out of active management and turning over the CEO reins of Thomas Nelson to Mark Schoenwald.

On Tuesday, Mark and I flew to Dallas to make the announcement to our Live Events team. That afternoon, I flew to Chicago and, on Wednesday, I attended a board meeting for a nonprofit ministry I support. On Thursday, I packed up my office at Thomas Nelson. On Friday, Gail and I began setting up my home office.

Today at Thomas Nelson we promoted Mark Schoenwald, our President and Chief Operating Officer, to the position of President and Chief Executive Officer. Effective immediately, I am stepping out of active management of the company, and turning over the reins to Mark. However, I will continue to serve as Chairman of the Board.

I hired Mark in 2005 to be our Chief Sales Officer. I promoted him to President and Chief Operating Officer in 2009. I have watched him grow and develop over the years. He is an outstanding executive in every way, yet humble and committed to our company’s Christian mission. He was my first choice as a successor, and I know he will do a terrific job.

Just three months after publication, Heaven Is for Real by Todd Burpo (with Lynn Vincent) is a publishing sensation. With more than one million copies in print, it the #1 bestselling non-fiction, trade paperback book on the New York Times list.

Todd Burpo is the pastor of a small Wesleyan church in Imperial, Nebraska, just 150 miles from my hometown in Kimball, Nebraska. He is also a wrestling coach and a volunteer fireman. He operates a garage door company with his wife, Sonja, who is also a children’s minister, busy pastor’s wife, and mom.

At least once or twice a week someone asks me, “So why do eBooks cost so much?” This is a fair question. After all, digital publishing eliminates the costs of physical manufacturing and distribution. What expenses do publishers have left?

As it turns out, plenty.

Last spring, Jim Bradford, Dean of Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University, interviewed me on my leadership philosophy and practice. He asked some tough questions. I tried to be as candid as I could be.

I intended to share the video here on my blog a few months ago, but it got lost in the shuffle. However, I thought about it today and thought you might enjoy seeing it.

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.

A little over a year ago, we announced the Thomas Nelson Book Review Bloggers program. The purpose of the program was to provide free books to bloggers in exchange for a 200-word review of the book. We don’t require positive reviews. We want bloggers to be honest in their assessment of the books they read.

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.

Last month, we published Notes From The Tilt-A-Whirl: Wide-Eyed Wonder in God’s Spoken World by N.D. Wilson. In a few minutes I’ll tell you how to get a copy free.

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.

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.

In the last two weeks, several people have asked to meet with me at the International Christian Retail Show (ICRS) being held in Denver, July 12–15, 2009. I have had to tell them that Thomas Nelson is not exhibiting this year. We also didn’t exhibit last year. Some have asked why.

Historically, trade shows have played an important role in publishing and bookselling. I have attended scores of them and have very fond memories of connecting with customers, authors, and the media. But the market has changed. Dramatically. We simply cannot justify the enormous costs associated with these trade shows—especially in this tough economy.

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.

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.

We are publishing a new book by Donald Miller this September. It is called A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. In case you are not familiar with Donald Miller, he is the New York Times bestselling author of Blue Like Jazz. His free-flowing narrative style and authenticity have made him one of our most popular authors.

The publishing landscape is changing quickly. We have seen the digital future coming for some time, but it is finally upon us. As a result, we are doing a lot of experimenting at Thomas Nelson, trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

Six weeks ago, we introduced NelsonFree. The basic idea is that if you buy the printed format of the book, we throw in the electronic and audio versions for free. We believe this program adds value without a lot of cost and would actually induce sales of the printed format of the book. It’s too early to tell if this will be the case, but the early indicators have been encouraging. We will be adding several more titles to this program in the months ahead.

A few weeks ago, Publishers Weekly published their list of hardcover bestsellers for 2008. They included all hardcover books that sold more than 100,000 copies. There were 155 fiction titles that made the cut and 119 non-fiction titles. I read through the lists, highlighting the ones that could be considered “Christian,” since I run a Christian publishing company.

Interestingly, only one Christian book made the fiction list—Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana by Anne Rice. Knopf published it, and it sold 112,000 units. (There may be others on the list, but I didn’t recognize them. If so, they were published by general trade publishers.)

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.