Michael Hyatt, the President and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, has provided (http://www.michaelhyatt.com/fromwhereisit/2006/12/the_top_ten_pub.html) a list of the top ten trade publishers in America. One might think that this is commonly available information, but he says of his new monthly list, "As far as I know, we are the only publisher in world who has this information." Their numbers were collected over the last few months and are "a proprietary database made up of various point-of-sale databases."

Here's the top 10 publishers and their shares:

1) Random House (17.2%)
2) HarperCollins* (13.3%)
3) Simon & Schuster (9.2%)
4) Penguin (8.7%)
5) Hachette (5.9%)
6) Thomas Nelson (4.8%)
7) St. Martin’s (3.2%)
8) Tyndale (1.9%)
9) John Wiley & Sons (1.7%)
10) Scholastic (1.6%)
Total Top Ten: 67.5%

*Includes Zondervan

Thomas Nelson Publishers is the largest Christian publishing company, and so they also compiled a separate list aimed at the top ten Christian publishers. That list is also available at Michael Hyatt's blog, which also has other interesting articles such as this post (http://www.michaelhyatt.com/fromwhereisit/2006/05/bestsellers_are.html) on how top sellers remain at the top for shorter durations than in previous decades.

So... does he make the list of top 10 e-book publishers?

Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be a part of his data. You should suggest it to him!

What happened to Harlequin?

I think if you read the fine print, you'll see that he claims this list for "Trade" publishers. Trade is the large-sized paperbacks as opposed to "Mass Market" which is the pocket sized, and obviously not including hardback and eBooks.

I also wonder whether "America" excludes Canada, which might be why Harlequin is not mentioned.

Rob Preece
Publisher, www.BooksForABuck.com

Thomas Nelson Publishers is the largest Christian publishing company, and so they also compiled a separate list aimed at the top ten Christian publishers. That list is also available at Michael Hyatt's blog, which also has other interesting articles such as this post (http://www.michaelhyatt.com/fromwhereisit/2006/05/bestsellers_are.html) on how top sellers remain at the top for shorter durations than in previous decades.

I've never seen a top ten Christian publishers list somewhere else... Seems like a very foreign and remote concept here.