The head of the biggest Christian publishing company sees a “mixed bag” ahead for publishing and the current economic environment.

In a recent posting to his blog at www.michaelhyatt.com/fromwhereisit/, Thomas Nelson President and CEO Michael Hyatt shared the company's leading economic indicators. In terms of retail book holiday sales for the nine weeks ending Dec. 30, Amazon.com was the clear winner, growing “a whopping 34%” over the same period the previous year, Hyatt noted.

Traditional brick-and-mortar stores didn't fair so well. Barnes & Noble reported the best results. Their same-store sales were essentially flat with a slight decline of 0.1%. B. Dalton and Walden faired the worst with declines of 7.6% and 6.3% respectively, Hyatt said.

“Obviously, this retail concept isn't working as well as it once did,” Hyatt observed. “Traffic appears to be moving to the superstores and, quite noticeably, to Amazon.com. This shift began a few years ago and appears to be accelerating.”

Nielsen BookScan, measuring “sell-through” of books through general market retailers, reported a slight decline of 0.7% for the quarter. The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association's STATS (Sales Tracking Analysis Trends Summary) measures sell-through through Christian specialty retailers, reported a 10.7% decline, Hyatt pointed out.

“At best, I think that the environment presents a “mixed bag” of economic indicators,” he said. “At worst, it's a challenging-even dangerous-environment. I suspect that a lot of smaller publishers-particularly those with a modest backlist-will struggle to stay in business.”