Top Ten U.S. Book Publishers

In his blog, From Where I Sit, Thomas Nelson Publishers CEO Michael Hyatt, listed the Top Ten Book Publishers in America (Through March 2008). But before I display the list, let me quote Hyatt in a little explanation:

... Top Ten Trade Publishers. (Publishers whose books are primarily sold through retail booksellers as opposed to, say, textbook publishers.) The various imprints are consolidated into their parent companies. So, for example, HarperCollins includes William Morrow and Zondervan. Simon & Schuster includes Free Press, Pocket Books, Howard Books, Scribner, etc.

This is the breakdown from a proprietary multiple-POS database:

Random House (15.9% market share)
Pearson (11%)
HarperCollins (10.6%)
Simon & Schuster (9.3%)
Hachette (6.2%)
Scholastic (5.2%)
Thomas Nelson (4.7%)
Holtzbrinck (4.4%)
Tyndale House (1.9%)
Wiley (1.9%)

They also assembled similar data for the top ten Christian publishers, from which I learned that two of the top ten trades (Nelson and Tyndale) are Christian and account for almost 7% of all trade book sales. Nelson, of course, dominates the Christian sales with almost 30%. I knew the Christian market was large and growing, but to see these publishers as the 7th and 9th largest in general sales comes as a surprise.

Sadly for me, I am once again knocked out of a market because of my ethics. I won't write on religion, war, or politics. That leaves only sex. Wonder if anyone assembles similar data on porn publishers? I can see myself, a starving writer, standing on a traffic island, holding a cardboard sign: WILL WRITE FOR PEACE OR PIECE.