Rupert Murdoch Now Controls Half of Christian Publishing Market

Via the eChurch blog:

HarperCollins have now confirmed their acquisition of Christian publisher Thomas Nelson.

HarperCollins Publishers today announced it has closed on the acquisition of Thomas Nelson, a leading trade publisher providing multiple forms of inspirational Christian content including: books, Bibles, e-books, journals, audio, video, reference curriculum, digital apps and live events.

Thomas Nelson will continue to operate as an independent company with its unique editorial focus on inspirational and Christian content. Details, such as how Thomas Nelson will benefit from HarperCollins global print and digital platform, will be forthcoming.

Thomas Nelson self-report as the largest Christian publisher in the world and the seventh largest trade-book publisher in the United States.

HarperCollins is a division of Murdoch’s NewsCorp which already owns Zondervan, the main rival of Thomas Nelson and the largest publisher of bibles in the world.

It’s being reported that HarperCollins paid $200 million to private-equity firm Kohlberg & Co. for Thomas Nelson.

According to trade sales figures this aquisition will give Murdoch roughly 50% of the Christian publishing market.

As long as he doesn’t get his paws on Ignatius, I’m happy… and safe…

Archbishop of Canterbury Becomes a Victim of the Economic Crisis

Probably meaning he stands to lose some money. Yup!

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, faces losing most of the £15,000 that he is owed by his publisher.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has consistently argued that rich nations should forgive the debts of poorer ones. Now, he faces a costly dilemma of his own.

His publisher, Darton, Longman and Todd, is struggling to pay off its debts and is seeking a company voluntary arrangement, which could mean the archbishop being asked to write off 75 per cent of the £15,000 that he is owed.

“If this proposal is not accepted by 75 per cent of creditors who respond, then DLT will be wound up,” warned David Moloney, its editorial director, in a letter. The publisher has brought out several of Dr Williams’s books, including Resurrection, Why Study the Past? and Open to Judgement…

Read on here.

 

The Biblical Archaeology Society 2011 Publication Awards

Are out and the winners announced here.

The 2011 Biblical Archaeology Society Publication Awards recognize the best books published in 2009 and 2010. The biennial BAS Publication Awards for books about archaeology and the Bible have been presented since 1985. These prestigious awards are made possible by a grant from the Leopold and Clara M. Fellner Charitable Foundation, through its trustee Frederick L. Simmons. Winning authors receive an award of $1,000.00 and an honorary certificate. BAS congratulates the recipients of the 2011 Publication Awards and extends heartfelt thanks to the panel of judges.

Categories are:

Best Scholarly Book on Archaeology

Best Popular Book on Archaeology

Best Book Relating to the Hebrew Bible

Special Citation

Best Book Relating to the New Testament

Check them out  here.

 

The ESV Makes More than 275 Verse Changes in the Text

And rather quietly at that:

The following is a letter from Crossway’s president regarding the 2011 ESV text changes:

Thank you for your love for God’s Word and for your interest specifically in the ESV Bible.

As the publisher of the ESV, I want to let you know that a small number of word changes are being incorporated into the ESV Bible text, as we reprint and publish new editions of the ESV in 2011.

The extent of the word changes is comparatively small, involving about 275 verses and less than 500 words out of more than 750,000 words in the Bible text.  To put this into perspective, the changes to the ESV are about one one-hundreth of the changes made recently in other leading Bible translations.

A few examples are changes from “yourself” to “you”; from “servant” to “worker”; from “has not” to “does not have”; from “young man” to “boy”; from “capital” to “citadel”; from “bondage” to “slavery”; from “nor” to “or”; from “trustworthy” to “faithful”; from “competent” to “sufficient”; from “everyone” to “each one.” A complete list of changes, shown in the context of each verse, is provided here.  You can also download a copy of the ESV preface, for further explanation of the ESV translation philosophy, principles, and legacy.

This list of 2011 changes was reviewed and discussed over the last five years by the thirteen-member ESV Translation Oversight Committee (TOC).  The TOC then met in the Summer of 2010, and finalized the list in the Spring of 2011.  The changes were then approved by the Crossway Board of Directors in April 2011.  Editions of the ESV with the 2011 text changes include the following notice on the copyright page: “ESV Text Edition:  2011.”

Most changes to the ESV text were made to correct grammar, improve consistency, or increase precision in meaning…

More here with the usual

… deeply conscious of the enormous responsibility entrusted to it—to translate the very words of God, with the greatest possible accuracy and precision, depth of meaning, and literary excellence…

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.