Gospel Light’s board of directors has named Dave Thornton as its new chief executive officer.

Thornton joined the Ventura, California-based company in 2013 as director of church sales and most recently served as director of sales and marketing. He joined Gospel Light after serving 17 years at Group Publishing in a variety of roles, from director of product development to director of church leadership and finally director of global innovations. Previously he worked in marketing for two years at David C Cook.

The Gospel Music Association (GMA) announced the nominees for the 45th Annual GMA Dove Awards today at Lipscomb University’s Allen Arena in Nashville. Producer-songwriter Wayne Haun led the nominations with 12, and artists Hillsong United, Lecrae, Mandisa and Matt Maher came away with five nominations each.

The awards show honoring the winners will take place Tuesday, Oct. 7, in the same arena at 6:30 p.m. CT (7:30 ET). Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) will air the show, reaching more than 100 million homes in the U.S. along with its global and multi-platform distribution.

Stormie Omartian’s Spanish-language books continue to soar to the top of publisher Unilit’s sales charts. Each year, some 200,000 copies of the titles written by the author reach the hands of the public, a number expected to rise with the publication of Choose Love (September, Harvest House Publishers) and its release from Unilit early next year in Spanish.

A former dancer and actress, Omartian shares in her testimony that she was the victim of abuse at the hands of her mentally ill mother. After committing her life to Christ, God led her to write about the topic closest to her heart, prayer. That was the beginning of the best-selling “The Power of a Praying” series. Recently she added to her growing list of books Lead Me, Holy Spirit and Prayer Warrior, both from Harvest House.

Barbour Publishing recently announced the July promotions of numerous employees on its editorial, production and marketing teams.

Annie Tipton has been promoted to senior acquisitions editor. In her new role, Tipton is focusing solely on acquisitions, as she will be responsible for product development in fiction and nonfiction. She also will manage Barbour’s acquisitions team—including Rebecca Germany, senior fiction editor; Brigitta Nortker, who has been promoted to nonfiction acquisitions editor; and an additional, soon-to-be-hired nonfiction acquisitions editor.

Amazon tells its side of the story in its ongoing dispute with Hachette Book Group regarding e-book pricing. The letter from the Amazon books team was posted on the company’s new website, readersunited.com, clearly named as such in response to the more than 900 authors who sided with Hachette in a letter at authorsunited.net. The authors’ letter to Amazon also appeared in a print ad in Sunday’s New York Times.

After tracing the history of publishing and comparing the advent of e-books to that of paperbacks, Amazon go to the heart of the matter: “We want lower e-book prices. Hachette does not.”

W Publishing Group, an imprint of Thomas Nelson, has secured the rights for The Good, The Bad, and The Grace of God, the first trade book from Jep and Jessica Robertson of A&E’s Duck Dynasty. In the book, the pair will share their personal story, one that involves rebellion, drugs, divorce, redemption and forgiveness.

“Here is what we know for sure: Forgiveness makes love possible,” said Jep and Jessica Robertson. “No one is perfect. We are all sinners. We must do the best that we can and learn to accept that sometimes we will fail. Love and forgiveness are necessary.”

LifeWay Christian Stores removed one of Mark Driscoll’s books from the chain’s offerings, effective Aug. 9. LifeWay.com also has pulled a number of Driscoll’s titles except for some to which he contributed only part of the book.

Marty King, director of communications at LifeWay Christian Resources, told Christian Retailing that LifeWay stores carried only one of Driscoll’s books—which he did not name—but verified that the book had been pulled.