Michael Hyatt Explains How Thomas Nelson Chooses Which Books to Publish

In continuing the discussion about the major changes going on over at Thomas Nelson Publishers, Michael Hyatt explains in his latest post how they choose which books to publish.

If you are an aspiring Christian author, you NEED to read his post.

Essentially Thomas Nelson categorizes all potential books into one of these four categories:

This means they are dropping out all “C” and “D” titles from consideration.

To me, this is the opposite of what I expected, because it means that authors who have an established brand in the marketplace (i.e. published authors) will not be published if their book does not have a competitive advantage over rivals.

I expected them to drop “B” and “D” titles. Because they kept “B” titles in there they have, in fact, kept OPEN the door for new authors as long as the writing is compelling and the book has a competitive advantage over its rivals.

How can a book gain competitive advantage over its rivals?

• Compelling = Can’t put it down
• Niche = Little Competition
• Author’s Media Platform
• Built In Audience
• Relevance To Current Events
• Unique Perspective In The Markeplace
• Etc.

As aspiring authors wanting to get published, we need to find as many ways as we can to find this “competitive advantage” for our books.

Also, if you are interested, here is my previous post about the changes at Thomas Nelson.