c. 1998 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Two hundred years ago, a man named Thomas Nelson wanted to put books into the hands of the common people of Scotland. Now, the company still bearing his name is a key player in an American industry striving to make Bibles and other Christian literature more accessible to average consumers.”In the past, Bibles were made basically at the whim of scholars, what they thought was important,”said Sam Moore, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers in Nashville, Tenn.

Moore, who as a recent immigrant from Lebanon sold Bibles door to door to pay his tuition, said he learned everyday people wanted Scriptures that weren’t just for scholars.”My dream was to make a Bible that the average person can understand,”Moore said in a recent interview.

His dream came true by taking advantage of”niche”marketing, in which numerous Bibles and other products have been created and aimed at specific categories of people, such as students, women, children and African-Americans.

But Moore, 67, has accomplished much more.

His company, with net revenues of $243 million at the end of fiscal 1997, not only is a premier Bible publisher, but also produces Christian books, children’s materials and gifts that fill the shelves of Christian and secular bookstores. Thomas Nelson is the only Christian publishing company traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

The company Moore has shaped into a publishing powerhouse began 200 years ago, when an 18-year-old Scottish man opened a second-hand bookshop in Edinburgh. One of Nelson’s aims was to publish classic literature, such as English preacher John Bunyan’s”Pilgrim’s Progress”and the Bible in inexpensive editions so”common folk”could purchase them.

Today, Moore sees parallels between his work and that of Nelson.”He was my hero,”Moore said.”When I read the story about this company, I felt pulled toward him. What this man is about, that’s what I am about. … This is a man who’s trying to meet the needs of the people.” But observers say the Lebanese publisher has so transformed the company that Moore is really the founder of a new version of Nelson’s original company rather than a successor to Nelson.”What he bought and what he has now don’t even relate to each other, so in many ways, he founded the company,”said Robert Wolgemuth, the owner of a Nashville literary agency who worked with Moore in the mid-1980s as the president of the company’s non-Bible publishing division.

Doug Ross, president and CEO of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association in Tempe, Ariz., noted Moore’s enthusiasm for transforming the company from the moment he purchased it.”He was lamenting the kind of publishing that Thomas Nelson was then known for and he was saying how he intended to change it to a much more evangelical thrust,”said Ross.

Lynn Garrett, religion editor of Publishers Weekly magazine, said the company has done just that.”They’re definitely coming from an evangelical Christian point of view and very much determined to preserve that,”she said.

Moore is particularly proud of the company’s production of the New King James Version, now the third best-selling Bible in the evangelical Christian market. The linguistic revision, finalized in 1982, took seven years to complete and has sold about 30 million copies.”I felt grateful to God for allowing a company like Thomas Nelson to update the Holy Scripture for the average layman in their language, in their tongue,”Moore said.

Though the NKJV was a success, Moore admits to making many mistakes during the nearly three decades he has led the company.

He said his biggest blunder related to a translation the company decided not to publish _ the now-popular New International Version.”The NIV was offered to us first and we didn’t take the translation,”he said.”This is the best-selling translation now.” Moore said his company chose not to upset its relationship with the American Bible Society _ with which it was working on another Bible project _ and his financial officer didn’t think it feasible to work on two translations at the same time.

Zondervan Publishing House, now a division of HarperCollins, got the NIV instead.”If he had been able to get the NIV … that could have really changed the whole direction of his company,”said Bruce Ryskamp, president and CEO of Zondervan.”The NIV is very foundational to Zondervan.” In Christian publishing, Zondervan, Thomas Nelson and Word are known as the”three big guys,”said Publishers Weekly’s Garrett. When Thomas Nelson bought Word in 1992 from Capital Cities/ABC, the purchase greatly increased Nelson’s clout and placed Word’s music as well as its publishing divisions under one umbrella.”Since they acquired Word, they are by far the largest Christian publisher,”Garrett said.

With the acquisition of Word, Thomas Nelson now publishes best-selling authors such as evangelist Billy Graham, fiction writer Frank Peretti and Dallas Theological Seminary president Chuck Swindoll.

But the company had trouble meeting the challenge of competing in the music industry, which was about a third of its revenue. In 1997, Thomas Nelson sold the Word Records and Music division to Gaylord Entertainment Co.

Other challenges the company has faced include the loss of millions from distribution problems and a plunge in the company’s stock price.

Moore said the company is now better focused and in improved financial shape.”We don’t owe the banks any money,”he said.”We are financially more sound than we’ve ever been in the history of the company.” Ross, of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, called Moore the”quintessential evangelical entrepreneur”who, like others, has had his ups and downs.”The mark of success … isn’t if you don’t fall down,”said Ross.”It’s whether or not you get back up. Sam’s been able to do that in a sterling way.” (OPTIONAL TRIM _ STORY MAY END HERE.)

And Moore, who tells his story in the recently published”American By Choice: The Remarkable Fulfillment of An Immigrant’s Dream”(Nelson), said he will continue to take risks as his company balances the drive for profits with the responsibility of being a ministry.”When you have a commitment to honor the Lord and to serve people, sometimes you `do product’ that are marginal or questionable from a profit viewpoint,”said Moore.

He points to his company’s recent initiative to sell more books and Bibles to African-Americans.”You have to challenge the market,”he said.

Zondervan’s Ryskamp said his company has had an African-American publishing program in place for more than a decade. He sees both companies striving for the same goal when it comes to reaching specialized groups of consumers, a trend in Bible publishing for the last 15 years.

The”niching”of Bibles in particular is here to stay, Moore said. His company already publishes 11 Bible translations in hundreds of different editions and styles. And he expects to reach more subgroups of consumers in the future.”We have about 1,000 different Bibles now,”he said.”In order to cater to the larger group of people, to the church at large, to the Christian community at large, it behooves us to try to meet the needs of as many particular groups as possible.”

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