There's No Doubting Thomas

by Sara Nelson -- Publishers Weekly, 2/27/2006

While it may not have received as much mainstream press attention as the sale of Time Warner Book Group two weeks ago, the privatizing of Thomas Nelson, the Nashville-based religious publisher, is actually more interesting.

Instead of simply switching from one publicly traded conglomerate's hands to another's, Nelson will now become an investment of InterMedia Partners, a private equity firm that has previously invested in small to medium-sized media companies. What this means (beyond stymieing intrepid reporters like PW's because a private company does not have to report earnings, etc., to anyone, let alone journalists) is that one of the oldest, largest and fastest growing "faith-based" publishers in this country now answers to a higher power than the stock market. And while insiders predict that InterMedia will likely hold the company for only a few years and then "flip" it for major profit, the fact that they deigned to invest in print—and old-fashioned print, at that (one of Nelson's more successful divisions publishes dozens of different versions of the Bible)—is striking.

Clearly, at least one group of somebodies thinks the rumors of publishing's death are greatly exaggerated. After all, InterMedia paid nearly as much for Nelson ($473 million) as Lagardère paid for Time Warner Book Group ($538M), even though Nelson's annual revenues are half that of its big city colleague—a vote of confidence for the future of the company, for sure. Obviously, somebody sees growth here—not to mention many backlist Bible sales that carry no earthly royalty.

But what does it mean that a religious publisher is a hotter commodity than a trade-book one? Like it or not, that fact begets a few others: that publishing does better the nichier it gets (viz: Bookspan, whose specialty clubs far outperform the general ones), that there is a huge and powerful religious community in this country (no "duh") and that many smaller houses have mastered the First Publishing Commandment: know thy audience.

On a recent trip to Nashville—at which I met with the stunningly organized, knowledgeable and, well, yes, zealous Nelson people, among others—I was struck by the number of titles they mentioned (titles of which I—and I bet many of you—had never heard) that had shipped and/or sold 200,000, 300,000 and 400,000 copies. I was further amazed at the number of focus groups the company conducted and how they arrived at the idea of publishing, say, Biblezines—the complete text of the New Testament, gussied up with sidebars and photos and pull quotes—aimed at teenage girls who'd told them they never read books, only magazines.

You can enthuse about what Nelson is selling or not—it's a free country—but there's no arguing with the fact that they're selling it extraordinarily well.

Or as one of the Nelson executives said to me, partly as a joke on our shared surname: "I hope you see that we're not exactly your father's religious publisher."

No kidding, I thought. But when it comes to publishing strategy, Thomas Nelson has made a believer out of InterMedia. And maybe even me, too.

Agree? Disagree? Tell us at www.publishersweekly.com/saranelson