Major Publishers
andyandy68
tree". There are really only a few major publishers out there, and
this list showed who owned which imprints. I've googled and can't find
it. Any one know a web site with this information?
Thanks.
Andrew Wheeler
I don't know of any website with that information. (Though I have seen
lists of editors -- usually out-of-date and horribly inaccurate.) But I
do work in publishing myself, so I can run down things as I see them.
There's more than a few publishers in this area, but not all that many
really big ones. I'll run down the US players (with an emphasis on
science fiction, since I'm reading this in rasfw and that's the side I
know best).
Major publishers, in rough order of size:
Random House Inc. (formed by the late-90s merger of what was then
Random House [itself formed by several mergers and acquisitions over
thirty years or so, notably including Crown and Knopf at that point]
and Bantam Doubleday Dell [formed by the merger of Doubleday & Co. with
the Bantam and Dell publishing enterprises in the mid-80s when the
German publishing empire Bertelsmann bought both of them])
Random House publishes science fiction under the Del Rey imprint (part
of the old Ballantine group of imprints, which were merged a couple of
years ago with "Little Random," the imprint actually called Random
House, and its affiliates) and under the Bantam Spectra imprint (part of
the Bantam Dell group, which has been that for a good decade, as far as
I can remember).
There was a historically important Doubleday science fiction line, but
that's been dead for quite some time now. The Random House Books for
Young Readers Group also does quite a bit of SF and SFnal books for
teenagers and younger readers, but I don't believe they have any named
imprint dedicated to the genre.
Other Random House imprints occasionally publish things that look like
SF, but those are the major forces.
HarperCollins (formed by the late-90s merger of the then HarperCollins
[itself formed by a merger before my time of the venerable Harper
Brothers US publishing company and a British company called Collins] and
the Hearst book publishing operations (mostly under the Avon and William
Morrow names).
Harper publishes SF primarily under the Eos line -- though there are
essentially *two* Eos lines, one for adult fiction and one for YA (young
adult) fiction.
Penguin (formed by the late-90s merger [1] of Viking Penguin [itself
the product of an earlier then-mega-merger] and Putnam Berkley [ditto])
Penguin publishes SF under the Ace and Roc imprints, and those two
imprints share an editorial team.
Penguin has a dedicated SF/Fantasy YA line, Firebird, but that's nearly
all paperback reprints. However, they also do a number of originals
(which often then turn into Firebird books in paperback) through other
named lines.
Penguin distributes and provides office space to DAW Books (the
publishing company founded by legendary SF editor Don Wollheim), but
only owns a minority stake in DAW.
Simon & Shuster was formed by the *early* '90s merger of what was then
S&S (which included the Pocket paperback empire) and Macmillan (which
was once related to the British company of the same name, in ways I
don't remember anymore -- they're very different now).
S&S publishes the Star Trek line through Pocket Books, and occasionally
other SF.
They also have a very active YA publishing arm, which has done lots of
fantasy over the years.
I think the next one is called The Time Warner Book Publishing Group
these days, though I could be a corporate name or two behind. It's the
book publishing arm of what was briefly named AOL Time Warner, and
includes the Warner publishing imprints and the old respected Little,
Brown hardcover line.
Warner publishes SF under the Warner Aspect imprint.
Then there's Holtzbrinck, the *other* big German publishing combine
(after Bertelsmann, parent of the first house above). They own Tor, the
largest SF publisher in the US. They also own St. Martin's Press (which
does the Dozois and Datlow/Grant/Link "Best of the Year" collections,
and a few other things), Farrar Straus Giroux (a literary house that
doesn't deliberately do SF) and Bloomsbury (the publisher of _Jonathan
Strange & Mr. Norrell_). Oh, and Henry Holt, but that doesn't do SF that
I know of.
Somewhat smaller houses that do some SF include:
Hyperion, which used to be the name for the publishing operations of
the Walt Disney Company. (Though I think it's just called "Walt Disney
Worldwide Publishing" or something like that now.)
Baen Books, an independent SF publisher founded and run by editor Jim
Baen. Distributed by S&S.
I mentioned DAW in passing under Penguin, above, but they are independent.
Harcourt (formerly Harcourt Brace, formerly Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
formerly Harcourt Brace, formerly Harcourt) had an adult SF line edited
by noted Lem translator (and novelist) Michael Kandel for a few years,
but that appears to be dead now. They're also a major YA publisher,
doing Diane Duane's "Young Wizard" books, among others.
Houghton Mifflin is J.R.R. Tolkien's US hardcover and trade paperback
publisher, and so should be mentioned for that. They don't really do any
other SF, though.
Harlequin, the Canadian romance publishing empire, has been doing more
and more SF-tinged romance over the past half-decade, and has an
imprint, Luna, dedicated to those books now. (Not to say that books with
SF subjects ddon't turn up elsewhere in their line, though.)
Ibooks was Byron Preiss's publishing arm, and he was always interested
in SF and comics. It seems to be continuing pretty much as before in the
wake of his very sudden death this summer. They do a lot of classic
reprints, for one thing.
Leisure is a major horror publisher, and is part of a publishing group
whose name I can't remember right now. (Probably because I hardly ever
deal with them.) Kensington! I think that's them.
Then there's the Avalon Publishing Group, which consists of a number of
smallish imprints. Most of them do SF only rarely or inadvertently, but
Carroll & Graf publishes the "Mammoth Book of" line, which has included
many SF titles.
Scholastic is a major, major YA publisher (they do that guy with the
lightning-bolt scar, for one thing), but don't publish adult fiction of
any kind. They have quite a bit of SF for younger readers.
Wizards of the Coast publish quite a number of books tying into their
RPG games, many of which are fantasy novels.
Then we move down to the SF-specific small presses. There are quite a
number of these, from Night Shade and Golden Gryphon to NESFA Press and
Old Earth Books. I'd say there's at least a dozen operations at this
level that publish at least one SF/Fantasy/Horror book a year, and some
of them publish quite a bit more than that. (Case in point: Wildside
Press, a small operation with a massive catalog of books.) I won't try
to list them all, but there are a number of them.
So there are six "big" houses, doing SF (and mysteries, which I didn't
really cover) under various imprints. None of them are completely
unified, so that's more than six outlets at that level. Adding in all of
the others, you get something like 30 (if I counted right) houses that
do a significant amount of SF each year.
[1] No points for spotting a trend at this point.
--
Andrew Wheeler
--
No ideas but in things.
Garrett Wollman
Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
> HarperCollins (formed by the late-90s merger of the then HarperCollins
>[itself formed by a merger before my time of the venerable Harper
>Brothers US publishing company and a British company called Collins] and
>the Hearst book publishing operations (mostly under the Avon and William
>Morrow names).
Actually, it was Harper & Row for about 40 years before it became part
of HarperCollins. (I don't have a date for that merger, but I do have
1817 for the formation of Harper & Bros. and 1961 for Harper & Row.
There's also a few weeks in 1898 when Doubleday & McClure ran Harper.)
HarperCollins was formed when Rupert Murdoch's The News Corporation
Limited, which already owned William Collins Ltd., bought Harper &
Row.
> Penguin (formed by the late-90s merger [1] of Viking Penguin [itself
>the product of an earlier then-mega-merger] and Putnam Berkley [ditto])
There's also the former NAL and Dutton buried in there as well.
> Simon & Shuster was formed by the *early* '90s merger of what was then
>S&S (which included the Pocket paperback empire) and Macmillan (which
>was once related to the British company of the same name, in ways I
>don't remember anymore -- they're very different now).
British Macmillan was started in 1846. Macmillan's American
distributor, owned by a New Yorker named George Brett, seems from my
paltry history seems to have been founded some time around 1890.
(This makes some amount of sense, as foreign authors were not granted
copyright in the US until 1891.) When British Macmillan reorganized
as a limited company in 1896, their American distributor did as well,
incorporating as the Macmillan Company of New York. However, at no
point was the New York company in any sense part of British
Macmillan. Macmillan of New York eventually became a full-line
publisher, in addition to reprinting and distributing works of English
publishers, but for many years (at least until 1943, the date of my
reference work) the firms remained close and each would often publish
the other firm's authors in their respective territories.
Some point after the War, British Macmillan decided that it ought to
have its own US arm. Since American Macmillan still existed at that
time, they had to call it something else, and hence "St. Martin's"
(after the London street where the mother house had been) was born.
American Macmillan soldiered on for a while, merging with
Scribner/Athenaeum in 1984. The deal you reference with S&S was
effectively a slow breakup. S&S was owned by Paramount
Communications, which was then (1994) being acquired by Viacom.
Paramount Communications was the old Gulf+Western, which had bought
S&S in 1975 and Prentice-Hall in 1984. By 1998, the Macmillan trade
list had effectively vanished or been subsumed into S&S or Scribner's;
Viacom sold the textbook business to Pearson (who also owned Penguin
and Addison-Wesley). The reference business (under both Scribner's
and Macmillan names) ended up in the hands of Thomson in 1999, but my
notes differ as to whether it was sold directly by Viacom or sold on
by Pearson.
> Then there's Holtzbrinck, the *other* big German publishing combine
>[...] Farrar Straus Giroux (a literary house that
>doesn't deliberately do SF) and Bloomsbury (the publisher of _Jonathan
>Strange & Mr. Norrell_). Oh, and Henry Holt, but that doesn't do SF that
>I know of.
FSG was Madeleine L'Engle's long-time publisher for both YA and adult
fiction.
> Harcourt (formerly Harcourt Brace, formerly Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
>formerly Harcourt Brace, formerly Harcourt) had an adult SF line edited
>by noted Lem translator (and novelist) Michael Kandel for a few years,
>but that appears to be dead now. They're also a major YA publisher,
>doing Diane Duane's "Young Wizard" books, among others.
Here's a very interesting history between Holt and Harcourt, but the
just-plain-"Harcourt" name is a recent thing. My data (with some
large admitted gaps) says:
1866:Henry Holt forms partnership with Frederick Leypoldt.
1919:Harcourt, Brace & Co. established by former Henry Holt employees.
1967:CBS acquires Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
1975:Harcourt Brace Jovanovich acquires Pyramid Books, renames to Jove.
1979:Harcourt Brace Jovanovich sells Jove to Putnam Berkley Group.
1985:Holtzbrinck acquires Holt, Rinehart trade division from CBS.
1987:CBS sells Holt, Rinehart & Winston to Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
1991:General Cinema acquires Harcourt, Brace & Co. [name may be anachronism]
1992-07-03:General Cinema changes name to Harcourt General.
1993:Harcourt General spins off General Cinema.
1998:Harcourt General acquires Morgan Kaufmann.
1999-10-22:Harcourt General spins off Neiman-Marcus.
2001-07-11:Reed Elsevier acquires Harcourt General.
2001-07-11:Thomson acquires Harcourt Higher Education from Reed Elsevier.
> Houghton Mifflin is J.R.R. Tolkien's US hardcover and trade paperback
>publisher, and so should be mentioned for that. They don't really do any
>other SF, though.
They used to have more; they were Julian May's publisher, for example.
Apparently, they didn't do a good job of promoting their SF list and
alienated their authors; May once gave that as her reason for
switching to Knopf mid-series. (I guess AAK didn't do any better by
her, as the second and third of her books with them were
unattractively packaged, and her current series is with Ace.)
I think you left out one outfit that surely counts as an important
player in this business: the one you work for.
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | As the Constitution endures, persons in every
wol...@csail.mit.edu | generation can invoke its principles in their own
Opinions not those | search for greater freedom.
of MIT or CSAIL. | - A. Kennedy, Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003)
Andrew Wheeler
<snip>
> I think you left out one outfit that surely counts as an important
> player in this business: the one you work for.
The SFBC is a very minor publisher, in my eyes -- we only do three or
four originals a year (more, I guess, if you count omnibuses, as _Locus_
does). That puts us on about the same level as John Pelan's operation
and somewhat under Night Shade Books. <grin>
Of course, we're a major *reprinter*, and have a major effect on the
field that way.
The SFBC is owned by Bookspan, which was created by the 2000 merger of
Doubleday Book & Music Clubs Inc. (the book club operations of old
Doubleday & Co., spun off as its own company after Bertelsmann bought
Doubleday) and Book-of-the-Month Inc. (the bookclub operations of Time
Inc., a sister company of the Time Warner Book Group). We're thus
co-owned by those two media colossi, which is I think unique. (Though
the Bertelsmann-affiliate book-club group in the UK, Book Club
Associates, was for many years co-owned by Bertelsmann and Reed
International -- I think that was all before Reed, a British
corporation, merged with Elsevier, a Dutch professional publishing corporation.)
Talking about publishing these days seems to devolve into a list of
mergers, doesn't it? And I only know half-well the ones that affect US
trade publishing, which isn't all of them by any means.
Gene Ward Smith
Andrew Wheeler wrote:
> Scholastic is a major, major YA publisher (they do that guy with the
> lightning-bolt scar, for one thing), but don't publish adult fiction of
> any kind. They have quite a bit of SF for younger readers.
We just had a thread about first sf books purchased, where I mentioned
buying
Against the Fall of Night from Scholastic. I count that as adult
fiction of some kind, though admittedly I bought it in grade school.
Andrew Wheeler
Well, "adult" and "YA" are publishing categories, rather than Platonic
Ideals or anything like that. Many books have been published in both
buckets (without editing, even!).
So saying that a house is a purely YA publisher is a lot like one of the
Hugo conditions for a Semiprozine -- if you declare that what you
publish is YA, it is. Scholastic has always said that their books are
for younger readers, and thus they have never published any adult
fiction. (It's very circular, but there it is.)
As you note, though, they have published editions of books that are
generally considered "adult" in their other editions.
Nancy Lebovitz
Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
>The SFBC is a very minor publisher, in my eyes -- we only do three or
>four originals a year (more, I guess, if you count omnibuses, as _Locus_
>does). That puts us on about the same level as John Pelan's operation
>and somewhat under Night Shade Books. <grin>
I didn't know you guys were doing original publishing. What sort of stuff?
--
Nancy Lebovitz http://www.nancybuttons.com
http://livejournal.com/users/nancylebov
My two favorite colors are "Oooooh" and "SHINY!".
Andrew Wheeler
>
> In article <43223002...@optonline.com>,
> Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
>
> >The SFBC is a very minor publisher, in my eyes -- we only do three or
> >four originals a year (more, I guess, if you count omnibuses, as _Locus_
> >does). That puts us on about the same level as John Pelan's operation
> >and somewhat under Night Shade Books. <grin>
>
> I didn't know you guys were doing original publishing. What sort of stuff?
There's Jonathan Strahan's _Best Short Novels_ series (two books to
date, in 2004 and 2005, covering the previous years' best novellas).
And we're now doing two or three anthologies of original novellas a
year. Last year was Silverberg's _Between Worlds_ and Marvin Kaye's _The
Fair Folk_ and so far this year we've had Resnick's _Down These Dark
Spaceways_. Next, at about the end of the year, will be _One Million
A.D._, edited by Gardner Dozois.
I edited an original collection of H.P. Lovecraft's stories a few years
back, and I'm doing another book called _Off The Main Sequence: The
Other Short Science Fiction of Robert A. Heinlein_ for this fall.
It's not a lot, but it's been growing in recent years.
John Pelan
<acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
>Garrett Wollman wrote:
>
><snip>
>
>> I think you left out one outfit that surely counts as an important
>> player in this business: the one you work for.
>
>The SFBC is a very minor publisher, in my eyes -- we only do three or
>four originals a year (more, I guess, if you count omnibuses, as _Locus_
>does). That puts us on about the same level as John Pelan's operation
>and somewhat under Night Shade Books. <grin>
Of course I have no idea what your printruns are, but I've always
asumed that they were in the high four figures or low five figures?
>
>Of course, we're a major *reprinter*, and have a major effect on the
>field that way.
Yep. And it seems that many titles are perpetually reissued, which
would seem to indicate higher numbers than I mentioned above.
I do look forward to your Heinlein collection, sounds like a very
worthwhile project.
Cheers,
John
Andrew Wheeler
>
> On Fri, 09 Sep 2005 20:59:46 -0400, Andrew Wheeler
> <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
>
> >Garrett Wollman wrote:
> >
> ><snip>
> >
> >> I think you left out one outfit that surely counts as an important
> >> player in this business: the one you work for.
> >
> >The SFBC is a very minor publisher, in my eyes -- we only do three or
> >four originals a year (more, I guess, if you count omnibuses, as _Locus_
> >does). That puts us on about the same level as John Pelan's operation
> >and somewhat under Night Shade Books. <grin>
>
> Of course I have no idea what your printruns are, but I've always
> asumed that they were in the high four figures or low five figures?
That used to be the case, but Alternates now most likely have a first
printing in the low four figures. Some of them get reprinted, and some don't.
Selections have an odder typical history, with usually two printings at
the beginning of their life (since we have an initial burst of sales,
and then the automatic shipment copies go out a couple of months later),
but less often need a reprint. In fact, since Selections are
automatically shipped out (and a certain percentage shipped back),
there's often an overstock six months or so after publication.
> >Of course, we're a major *reprinter*, and have a major effect on the
> >field that way.
>
> Yep. And it seems that many titles are perpetually reissued, which
> would seem to indicate higher numbers than I mentioned above.
There are a small handful of books we keep in print indefinitely --
_Stranger in a Strange Land_, _The Foundation Trilogy_, _Dune_, and
probably a few more. Those might seem to be "perpetually reissued," but,
without going into specifics, it's more the case that a printing lasts
quite a while.
Other than those books, well... our warehouse space is limited, as
everyone's is, and none of our books are sitting in bookstores, which
means we have to pay to climate-control every unsold book we have. And
so we pretty much let one old book go out of print for every new book
that comes into print. When we were offering fewer books, our books
stayed in print longer (and sold better, too), but now lots of things
barely stay in print for a year.
> I do look forward to your Heinlein collection, sounds like a very
> worthwhile project.
It was a book that I wanted someone else to have already done, but no
one else had done it. So I figured, if I wanted it on my shelf, I had to
do it myself. (I know you said something very similar here a day or two
ago; I think a lot of "classic SF" publishing is driven by that
feeling.) I'm expecting the introductions in the next day or two (that
will be cool), and, after that, I'll be putting the book to bed.
John Pelan
<acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
Thank for the very illuminating post! I'd always wondered about the
internal workings of teh SFBC. Beware the thought of "t was a book
that I wanted someone else to have already done, but no one else had
done it"; this way lies madness. ;-)
However, there's lots of Darkside Press titles that would make swell
SFBC selections... ;-)
Cheers,
John
Peter D. Tillman
Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
>
> Other than those books, well... our warehouse space is limited, as
> everyone's is, and none of our books are sitting in bookstores, which
> means we have to pay to climate-control every unsold book we have. And
> so we pretty much let one old book go out of print for every new book
> that comes into print. When we were offering fewer books, our books
> stayed in print longer (and sold better, too), but now lots of things
> barely stay in print for a year.
So -- what do you do with your remainders?
Curiously, Pete
Andrew Wheeler
First, we try to sell them off cheap to members (any time you see a sale
flyer, you can know that those are books we have more stock of than we
want). If that doesn't work, we try to get permission from the original
publisher to actually remainder them. And we do end up chopping books,
now and then.