Thomas Nelson Introduces Self-Publishing Division; 
Fiction Notes

-- Publishers Weekly, 10/27/2009 11:28:00 AM

Thomas Nelson and the self-publishing company Author Solutions Inc. earlier in October announced the launch of WestBow Press, a Christian self-publishing imprint. Nelson will monitor WestBow Press titles with an eye toward signing authors whose books sell well. ASI will manage WestBow on behalf of Nelson. It is the parent company of self-publishing imprints AuthorHouse, iUniverse, Trafford Publishing, and Xlibris, and brought to market more than 21,000 new titles in 2008. 

Popular evangelical Christian romance novelist Francine Rivers will publish her first full-length novel since 2003 with the March 16, 2010, launch of Her Mother’s Hope, a historical novel that draws from Rivers’s own family ancestry. Also on the historical fiction front, Strang Book Group joins the popular genre with Becoming Lucy by Martha Rogers (Jan.) under its fiction imprint, Realms. Strang said pre-pub orders for the book have exceeded expectations.