Lighthouse Trails Publishing - Looking Back at 2011 and Looking Ahead at 2012 - "HarperCollins Buys Thomas Nelson, Will Control 50% of Christian Publishing Market" - And many of the more established Christian publishers have been bought out by h
As Lighthouse Trails Publishing (the publishing arm of Lighthouse Trails Research Project) soon nears the end of our 10th year (10 years this coming March), we'd like to take a moment to ponder 2011, which was a busy year for us. It's not easy being a small publisher in today's western society where book reading is being slowly squeezed out of many people's lives by the Internet, television, radio, and a host of other technological inventions. Not only that, small publishing houses must compete with the large houses that seem to have marketing budgets that keep them selling thousands, if not millions, of books. And many of the more established Christian publishers have been bought out by huge secular corporations giving their marketing budgets even more clout. An article in Christianity Today this past fall titled "HarperCollins Buys Thomas Nelson, Will Control 50% of Christian Publishing Market" is a case in point. HarperCollins bought Zondervan in 1988. Thomas Nelson and Zondervan are Christian publishing's two largest publishing house. -- But in spite of the huge challenge it is for small publishers to stay in business, Lighthouse Trails is still here after nearly a decade. We believe that God has continued to provide for us; and we thank Him for giving us the wisdom to keep our overhead small, live and work as simply and frugally as we can, and never lower our standards from what we believe they should be just so we can sell more books. We'll never be a Thomas Nelson or Zondervan (we think that might be a good thing considering their move toward contemplative and emerging), but we hope and pray we can be around another ten years and represent even more authors than we already have who have biblical and personal integrity.