Eoin Purcell's Blog

Eoin Purcell

From Where I sit:
The blog of Thomas Nelson boss Michael Hyatt (one of my favourite blogging CEOs by the way. He has a knack for blogging interesting and important points both for his internal audience and for those outside) has a very interesting analysis of the top ten trade publishers in the USA. It is built, in his words, from:

a proprietary database made up of various point-of-sale databases. It includes all the major retail sales channels. It does not include international, ministry, book fairs, direct-to-consumer sales, etc. If it did, we would be higher on the list because of our robust ministry, school fundraising, and live event sales. Scholastic would also be higher on the list because of their huge book fair business. However, this database only tracks sales through retail channels.

We are now updating this on a monthly basis. As far as I know, we are the only publisher in world who has this information.

It is certainly very exciting stuff. As for the list you should visit to see details but the top five are:

1 Random House – 17.2%
2 HarperCollins – 13.3%
3 Simon & Schuster – 9.2%
4 Penguin – 8.7%
5 Hachette – 5.9%

And of course Hyatt’s company, Nelson are 6th!
Some extra commentary here from Michael DiMarco

Numbers are great
Eoin