HarperCollins to Acquire Thomas Nelson

In a deal that will unite the country’s two largest religion book publishers, HarperCollinsPublishers (@HarperCollins), parent company of Zondervan (@zondervan), has reached an agreement to acquire Thomas Nelson (@ThomasNelson) for $200 million. HC expects to close the purchase before the end of the year. Here’s the report by Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly):

HC CEO Brian Murray said the publisher was attracted to Nelson because of its “great content and great authors.” He sees Nelson as being more broad based than Zondervan, pointing to Nelson lines in such areas as business and leadership. Nelson, he added, “is a leader in the inspirational market and we are always looking for good content.” Nelson has had one of the bestselling books of the year in Heaven Is for Real. The area where the two are in the most direct competition is the Bible category. Nelson and Zondervan are the dominant Bible publishers in the Christian market, and they license or own translations that compete head to head.

HC also has a religion imprint called HarperOne (@HarperOne) and its Avon (@avonbooks) romance imprint has a Christian fiction line called Avon Inspire.

Read the PW report in full.

Read the news release.

Read coverage by The New York Times.

Read coverage by The Wall Street Journal.

Read coverage by Christianity Today.

See "Perspective on the Sale of Thomas Nelson Publishers" by Steve Laube of The Steve Laube Agency (@stevelaubeagent).

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This is definitely an industry-shaking development. But remember that Harper has owned, since the late eighties, both Zondervan and HarperOne, out in San Francisco, another religious publishing imprint, and both have been run completely separately all this time and still are.
Of course, Z and HarperOne are very different imprints, reaching a different audience. Z and Nelson publish for much the same market and have catalogs that look very similar--strong in Bibles, trade nonfiction, fiction, and reference, and both aggressive in the digital frontier.
The encouraging thing about this is that, clearly, HarperCollins sees a future in the Christian publishing world and they're investing in it, big time, even at a time when many publishing entities are backing off, playing it safe. It will be interesting to see if that same aggressive attitude shows up in future acquisitions and sales and marketing and technological efforts.
It's clear to see why Nelson was an attractive acquisition for Harper. Look at the current ECPA bestseller list, top 50 titles. Zondervan has eleven of those bestsellers, many of them clustered at the top. Nelson has ten, again many of them clustered at the top. Combined, the two houses own over forty percent of the current ECPA bestsellers, and a disproportionate number of the top ones. Next on the list is Faithwords, with five, and then come B&H, Cook, Tyndale, and Baker, with three or four, mostly lower on the list. In other words, no one else is close to either of the top houses, much less to their combined strength. 
— lambertedits