Following Thomas Nelson's recent elimination of its 21 imprints, the head of the largest Christian publishing company anticipates other publishers following suit.

In an April 6 posting to his blog at www.michaelhyatt.com/fromwhereisit, Thomas Nelson President and CEO Michael Hyatt noted that his company is publishing all of its books under the single “Thomas Nelson” imprint as of April 1, and Cook Communications recently announced that the company will phase out several imprints and all of its fall titles will carry the David C. Cook imprint.

Writing in an article entitled “Imprints: An Endangered Species,” Hyatt said the moves were “the beginning of a trend.” He had met with most of Nelson's biggest retail customers in the last 90 days, he said, who had “congratulated us on the elimination of our imprints. As a buyer at one of the country's largest bookstore chains told me, 'Imprints add zero value to our business. They only produce clutter and confusion. I have told the other major publishers that they should follow your example.'”

Hyatt added that based on his first-hand conversations with retailers, “it's clear to me that imprints don't mean much to them. “There are too many. No one can keep them all straight,” he said. “Speaking as the CEO of one the larger publishing houses, I couldn't even keep our own imprints straight.”

Hyatt said that “if it doesn't matter to retailers and it doesn't matter to consumers, why do we need them?” “I would argue that we don't. The only people who care are usually the publishers who lead the imprint and a few authors who have an emotional attachment to their history with that imprint,” he said. “But this means nothing to customers. The sooner we start focusing on what matters to them (customers)-and the more we invest in that-the better off we will all be.”