| Founded | 1798 1854 (US) |
|---|---|
| Founder | Thomas Nelson |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | Nashville, Tennessee |
| Key people |
Michael S. Hyatt, President & CEO |
| Publication types | Books |
| Revenue | $252.7 million USD (Fiscal 2006) |
| Number of employees | 675 |
| Official website | www.thomasnelson.com |
Thomas Nelson is a publishing firm that began in Scotland in 1798 as the namesake of its founder. Its former US division is currently the sixth largest American trade publisher and the world's largest Christian publisher. It is owned by the private equity firm Kohlberg & Company. HarperCollins announced its acquisition of Thomas Nelson in 2011.[1]
In Canada, the Nelson imprint is used for educational publishing by Cengage Learning. In the UK, it was a mainstream publisher until the late 20th Century and is now part of another educational imprint, Nelson Thornes.
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Thomas Nelson founded the company that bears his name in Edinburgh in 1798, originally as a second-hand religious bookshop but soon diversifying into publishing reprints of Puritan writers. The firm went on to become a publisher of new books, and as the nineteenth century progressed it produced an increasingly wide range of non-religious materials; by 1881 religion accounted for less than 6% of the firm's output.
By the early twentieth century, Thomas Nelson had become a secular concern in the UK. Until 1968, according to the curators of a Senate House Library exhibition, it "specialised in producing popular literature, children's books, Bibles, religious works and educational texts." [2] It was the first publisher for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Thomson owned the company from 1960 until 2000. That year it was acquired by Wolters Kluwer, who merged Nelson with its existing publishing arm, Stanley Thornes, to form Nelson Thornes.
The American branch of Thomas Nelson was set up in 1854 in New York, and by the 1870s it was one of the city's most important firms. It held the copyright for the American Standard Version of the Bible from 1901 until 1928, when it transferred the copyright to the International Council of Religious Education. In the 1930s, the company made a deal with this Council (which later became part of the National Council of Churches) to publish the Revised Standard Version. Following an ownership change in 1960, which the firm was sold to The Thomson Organization, changes happened, and in 1962 the company’s failure to meet demand for this Bible translation led to the National Council of Churches granting other publishers licenses for the work, leading to a dramatic fall in revenue.
In 1950, 19-year old Sam Moore came to Columbia, South Carolina, with an intent to pursue medical training. To pay his way through college at the University of South Carolina, and later Columbia Bible College, Moore began to sell Bibles door-to-door. The Lebanese immigrant had a strong sense of American patriotism and free enterprise and used it to establish the National Book Company in 1958, and in 1961, established Royal Publishers, and sold stock in the firm a year later, with notable shareholders including Morrow Coffey Graham, mother of noted evangelist Billy Graham.
Royal Publishers' success for five years, more than doubling sales every year, and resulted in the Thomson Organization asking if he would take control of Nelson's North American operations. Instead, Moore surprised the firm by offering to purchase the company, and Moore took over on March 7, 1969, preferring to keep the company's name and logo. In Canada, the brand continues as Thomson Nelson, an educational imprint. In the 1960s, Thomas Nelson moved its headquarters from New York to Camden, New Jersey. It moved again to Nashville, Tennessee in the 1970s. From 1979-82, Nelson developed the New King James Bible (also known as the Revised Authorized Version) and under Moore began diversifying the company with a gift division.
In 1992, Thomas Nelson Inc began its modern advancement. Nelson purchased the Word music and books brand from Capital Cities-ABC. In 1997, the company split the two, spinning off the record label and printed music division, one of the largest church music companies, to Gaylord Entertainment. That led to a lawsuit by Gaylord in 2001 over the Word name, and was settled when Nelson renamed their book division the W Publishing Group. That year also led to a corporate expansion by the purchase of the Cool Springs and Rutledge Hill Press labels.
In 2003, World Bible Publishers was acquired by Nelson, and also the fiction label WestBow Press made its debut (all books were later consolidated under the Nelson brand and WestBow Press was resurrected in 2009 to offer self-publishing services to aspiring authors). Also, an imprint for internet news source WorldNetDaily made its debut that year. The agreement dissolved, however, after 2004, and the former WND brand is now under the Nelson Current brand, including its authors.
Thomas Nelson, now based in Nashville, publishes leading Christian authors, including Billy Graham, Max Lucado, John Eldredge, John Maxwell, Charles Stanley, Michael A. O'Donnell, Ted Dekker and Dave Stone. Thomas Nelson Inc in 2000 began marketing the Women of Faith conference, a concept devised by author Stephen Arterburn in 1995, after attending a church conference in Atlanta. Today, the Women of Faith conference is one of the best-known women's events around North America, attracting over 400,000 women annually. In 2005, Thomas Nelson launched the Revolve teen conferences, built on the Women of Faith model. Michael S. Hyatt, a twenty-five year veteran of the publishing industry, became President and CEO of the company on August 18, 2005, succeeding Sam Moore who served as the company's CEO for nearly 47 years.
In February 2006 it was announced that private equity firm InterMedia Partners, in conjunction with some other investors, had agreed to buy Thomas Nelson for $473 million. The transaction closed on June 12, 2006. The company now operates as a private company. In 2010, a group led by Kohlberg & Company bought a majority share of the company. In 2011, it was announced that the News Corporation would buy Thomas Nelson for $200 million.[3]
When Thomson sold Thomas Nelson UK, it kept the Canadian operations of the publisher as part of the company's education division. Thomson Education was spun off as Cengage Learning in the US and Canada in 2007. The Nelson name lives on through the Canadian company Nelson Education Ltd., an educational publisher.
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