Thomas Nelson Publishers increased its leading share of the Christian book market last year, according to President Michael Hyatt.

The company's titles accounted for 29.3% of the Christian market in the 12 months ending March 31, Hyatt revealed in a posting at his fromwhereisit blog.

That was up from the 27.5% share for the previous year, based on the proprietary database the company has developed from point-of-sale systems "from multiple sales channels."

Though the top five ranking positions in the list did not change, second place Zondervan and fifth place Waterbrook Multnomah saw their shares fall slightly, to 19% and 3.9% respectively while Tyndale House Publishers (third, 11.8%) and Baker Publishing Group (fourth, 5.4%) had increases.

On the overall top 10 trade publishers list, Nelson fell from sixth in the 2007 rankings to seventh this year. Hyatt attributed that to sales of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows propelling Scholastic from 10th place. Excluding this title, Nelson remained No. 6 behind (in order) Random House, Pearson, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Hachette Book Group (USA).

Rounded out by Harvest House, B&H Publishing Group, FaithWords, Barbour Publishing and Moody Publishers, the top 10 Christian publishers represent 82.3% of the total market, according to the Nelson data. Hyatt said that the Nelson ranking system was "not perfect, but we do believe it represents the best data currently available."