Harper Collins Buys Thomas Nelson

The big news in the publishing industry on Monday was the announcement that HarperCollins will acquire Nashville publisher Thomas Nelson, probably by the end of the year.

Nashville Scene reports:

This makes a lot of sense. HarperCollins already owns Zondervan and has the HarperOne imprint. Speaking in very, very broad terms, Zondervan’s focus is on religious books that go into Christian bookstores or are used as church curricula. HarperOne is aimed more at the secular bookstore market. And Thomas Nelson really hits that sweet spot right down the middle — doing some very successful titles that appeal to the secular bookstore model and being a mainstay of the Christian bookstore.

The other thing that Thomas Nelson has a reputation for is its engagement with the electronic realm — its embrace of blogging and digital communication as well as its ability to produce ebooks, without the whole press getting sucked into a vortex of painful ridiculousness where various staffers run around having increasingly public breakdowns where they give maudlin recitations of the good old days when a book was a book (which is how most other publishers are handling the arrival of the digital age). Just having that expertise is probably worth whatever the cost of acquiring them is.

Thomas Nelson, meanwhile, gets a little shelter during this very stormy period in publishing history, not to mention a marketing and publicity arm they previously could only dream of. After all, who owns HarperCollins? NewsCorp. Yes, the parent of Fox News, but more than that, it’s one of the largest multinational media conglomerates. Not only can Thomas Nelson now publish a book anywhere in the world, but actually launch a book anywhere in the world, getting media attention and bookstore buy-in they didn’t have before.

Only one thing nags at me. Christian readers, if you open your Bibles, you will probably find that they were published either by Zondervan or Thomas Nelson. Does this mean that HarperCollins will have effectively cornered the Bible market? Ha, makes you wonder if they acquired Thomas Nelson for that reason. There are a lot of Bibles sold every year. It’s a perennial best seller. Most presses would love to have a back-list performer like that, and now HarperCollins owns two of the most trusted names in Bible publishing.

The Litany of the Saints

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Source:  CNN

 

Music Break

We haven’t had some music in a while here.

All Saints

O Almighty God, who hast knit together thine elect in one communion and fellowship, in the mystical body of thy Son Christ our Lord: Grant us grace so to follow thy blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those indescribable joys which thou hast prepared for those who truly love thee: through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

Wikipedia has more here:

All Saints’ Day (in the Roman Catholic Church officially the Solemnity of All Saints and also called All Hallows or Hallowmas), often shortened to All Saints, is a solemnity celebrated on 1 November by parts of Western Christianity, and on the first Sunday after Pentecost in Eastern Christianity, in honour of all the saints, known and unknown.

In Western Christian theology, the day commemorates all those who have attained the beatific vision in Heaven. It is a national holiday in many historically Catholic countries. In the Roman Catholic Church and many Anglican churches, the next day, All Souls’ Day, specifically commemorates the departed faithful who have not yet been purified and reached heaven. Catholics celebrate All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day in the fundamental belief that there is a prayerful spiritual communion between those in the state of grace who have died and are either being purified in purgatory or are in heaven (the ‘Church Suffering’ and the ‘church triumphant’, respectively), and the ‘church militant’ who are the living…