Simon & Schuster LLC ( ) is an American publishing house owned by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts since 2023. It was founded in New York City in 1924, by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster."What it Means to Be a Book Publisher at 29: What Simon and Schuster Have Found Out in Their Pursuit of Best Sellers". , by Beatrice Barmby, McClure's magazine (October 1927) p. 62. Along with Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins and Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster is considered one of the "Big Five" English-language publishers. , Simon & Schuster was the third largest publisher in the United States, publishing 2,000 titles annually under 35 different imprints.
History Early years In 1924, Richard Simon's aunt, a crossword puzzle enthusiast, asked whether there was a book of New York World crossword puzzles, which were popular at the time. After discovering that none had been published, Simon and Max Schuster decided to launch a company to exploit the opportunity.Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s, p. 165. . At the time, Simon was a piano salesman and Schuster was editor of an automotive trade magazine. They pooled , equivalent to $ today and started a company that published crossword puzzles.
The new publishing house used "fad" publishing to publish books that exploited current fads and trends. Simon called this "planned publishing". Instead of signing authors with a planned manuscript, they came up with their own ideas, and then hired writers to carry them out.
In the 1930s, the publisher moved to "Publisher's Row" on Park Avenue in Manhattan, New York.
Expansion In 1939, Simon & Schuster backed Robert Fair de Graff to found Pocket Books, America's first paperback publisher. In 1942, Simon & Schuster and Western Publishing launched the Little Golden Books series in cooperation with the Artists and Writers Guild."Announcing Little Golden Books". Publishers Weekly. September 19, 1942, pp. 991–994.
In 1944, Marshall Field III, owner of the Chicago Sun, purchased Simon & Schuster and Pocket Books. The company was sold back to Simon & Schuster following his death in 1957 for $1 million.
In the 1950s and 1960s, many publishers including Simon & Schuster turned toward educational publishing due to the baby boom market. Pocket Books focused on paperbacks for the educational market instead of textbooks and started the Washington Square Press imprint in 1959. By 1964, it had published more than 200 titles and was expected to put out another 400 by the end of that year. Books published under the imprint included classic reprints such as Lorna Doone, Ivanhoe, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and Robinson Crusoe. In 1967, Simon & Schuster acquired Monarch Press Publishing, Inc. with its extensive line of college and high school study guides.
In 1960, Richard Simon died of a heart attack; six years later, Max Schuster retired and sold his half of Simon & Schuster to Leon Shimkin. Shimkin then merged Simon & Schuster with Pocket Books under the name of Simon & Schuster. In 1968, editor-in-chief Robert Gottlieb, who had worked at Simon & Schuster since 1955 and edited several bestsellers including Joseph Heller's Catch-22, left abruptly to work at competitor Knopf, taking along influential S&S employees Nina Bourne and Tony Schulte.
On January 28, 1975, Simon & Schuster was acquired by Gulf+Western in an 8-for-1 stock swap.Koshetz, Herbert. "G.&W. to Acquire a Book Publisher", The New York Times, Wednesday, January 29, 1975. Retrieved October 16, 2021 Four years later, in 1979, Richard Snyder was named CEO. Over the next several years he would help the company to grow substantially.
1980s After the death of Gulf+Western head Charles Bluhdorn on February 19, 1983,Blair, William G. "Charles G. Bluhdorn, the Head of Gulf and Western, Dies at 56", The New York Times, Sunday, February 20, 1983. Retrieved October 16, 2021. the publishing company made the decision to diversify. Bluhdorn's successor Martin Davis told The New York Times, "Society was undergoing dramatic changes so that there was a greater need for textbooks, maps, and educational information. We saw the opportunity to diversify into those areas, which are more stable and more profitable than trade publishing."
In 1984, Simon & Schuster under CEO Richard E. Snyder acquired educational publisher Esquire Corporation, owner of companies including Allyn & Bacon (and former owner of Esquire magazine), for $180 million. Prentice Hall was brought into the company fold in 1985 for $700 million, viewed by some executives as a catalyst to change the company as a whole. This acquisition was followed by Silver Burdett in 1986, mapmaker Gousha in 1987 and Charles E. Simon in 1988. Part of the acquisition included educational publisher Allyn & Bacon which, according to then editor and chief Michael Korda, became the "nucleus of S&S's educational and informational business". Three California educational companies were also purchased between 1988 and 1990Quercus, Fearon Education and Janus Book Publishers. In all, Simon & Schuster spent more than $1 billion in acquisitions between 1983 and 1991.
In the 1980s, Snyder also made an unsuccessful bid toward video publishing, At the start, Snyder was dismayed to realize that though Simon & Schuster had a huge bestseller in Jane Fonda's Workout Book, they did not own the rights to the VHS, which was earning even better. This prompted Snyder to ask editors to obtain video rights for every new book. Agents were often reluctant to give these up, and the S&S Video division never took off. However, in 1985 Simon & Schuster then launched its profitable audiobook division, which became a major business for the company by the 1990s.
In 1989, Gulf and Western Inc., owner of Simon & Schuster, changed its name to Paramount Communications Inc.
1990s In 1990, The New York Times described Simon & Schuster as the largest book publisher in the United States, with sales of $1.3 billion the previous year. That same year, Simon & Schuster acquired the children's publisher Green Tiger Press.
In 1993, Simon & Schuster bought Macmillan (including Scribner's, Free Press, and Jossey-Bass), and changed its name to Paramount Publishing. Viacom then bought Paramount in 1994 and changed the name back to Simon & Schuster. Macmillan was acquired for US$552.8 million. Later that year, Snyder was suddenly fired from S&S and was replaced by the company's president and chief operating officer Jonathan Newcomb. Simon & Schuster then sold several peripheral assets, such as selling Charles E. Simon Co. to CDB Infotek. Gousha was sold to Rand McNally in 1996.
In 1994, S&S acquired the software operations of Markt+Technik. Later that year, Simon & Schuster (through Paramount) launched a software publisher in partnership with Davidson & Associates named Simon & Schuster Interactive. The studio published video games such as Outlaw Golf, Deer Avenger, I.M. Meen, Chill Manor, EVE Online, and games based on Richard Scarry's characters. S&S Interactive shut down in 2003.
In 1998, Viacom sold Simon & Schuster's educational operations (including Prentice Hall, Macmillan, and Jossey-Bass) to Pearson plc, the global publisher and then owner of Penguin and the Financial Times; Pearson then merged the operations with Addison-Wesley Longman to form Pearson Education. Later, Pearson sold several of the acquired S&S divisions: first Appleton & Lange was divested to McGraw-Hill and Master Data Central was sold to Master Data Center. Then, Jossey-Bass was sold to John Wiley & Sons and the Bureau of Business Practice was sold to Wolters Kluwer. Subsequently, Macmillan Library Reference's children's imprints (Silver Burdett Press, Dillon Press, Crestwood House, Silver Press, New Discovery and Julian Messner) were closed. Then, Gale acquired Macmillan Library Reference (Charles Scribner's Sons Reference, Macmillan Reference, Thorndike Press, G.K. Hall, Twayne Publishers and Schirmer Books). Finally, IDG Books acquired Macmillan General Reference (including Frommer's, J.K. Lasser, Betty Crocker Cookbooks, Weight Watchers Dieting and Cookbooks and Howell House Pet Books but excluding Complete Idiot's Guides, which Pearson later transferred to Macmillan Computer Publishing under Alpha Books and currently part of Penguin Random House under Dorling Kindersley).
2000s In 2002, Simon & Schuster acquired its Canadian distributor Distican. Simon & Schuster began publishing in Canada in 2013.
At the end of 2005, Viacom split into two companies: CBS Corporation (which inherited S&S and Paramount Parks), and the other retaining the Viacom name. Also in 2005, Simon & Schuster acquired Strebor Books International, which was founded in 1999 by author Kristina Laferne Roberts, who has written under the pseudonym "Zane". A year later, in 2006, Simon & Schuster launched the conservative imprint Threshold Editions.
In 2009, Simon & Schuster signed a multi-book and co-publishing deal with Glenn Beck which appeared under many of its imprints and included adult non-fiction, fiction, children, and YA literature as well as e-book and audiobook originals. As part of CBS, Simon & Schuster has been the primary publisher for books related to various media franchises owned by and/or aired on CBS such as CSI. The company has also held a license to publish books in the Star Trek franchise under Pocket Books.
2010s In 2011, Simon & Schuster signed a number of co-publishing deals. Glenn Beck signed a new co-publishing deal with Simon & Schuster for his own imprint, Mercury Ink. Under Atria, Simon & Schuster also launched a publishing venture with Cash Money Records called Cash Money Content.
On April 11, 2012, the United States Department of Justice filed United States v. Apple Inc., naming Apple, Simon & Schuster, and four other major publishers as defendants. The suit alleged that they conspired to fix prices for e-books, and weaken Amazon.com's position in the market, in violation of antitrust law.
Simon & Schuster reorganized all of their imprints under four main groups in 2012. The four groups included the Atria Publishing Group, the Scribner Publishing Group, the Simon & Schuster Publishing Group and the Gallery Publishing Group. According to CEO Carolyn Reidy, the divisions were created to align imprints that complement one another and that the structure would "lead to a sharper editorial focus for our imprints even as it takes consideration of the natural affinities among them." In 2012, Simon & Schuster launched a self-publishing arm of the company, Archway Publishing.
On November 14, 2013, Simon & Schuster signed a co-publishing agreement with former New York Yankees shortstop, Derek Jeter, to launch Jeter Publishing. In December 2013, a federal judge approved a settlement of the antitrust claims, in which Simon & Schuster and the other publishers paid into a fund that provided credits to customers who had overpaid for books due to the price-fixing.
In 2014, Simon & Schuster signed a partnership deal with Amazon over ebooks and also launched a new speculative fiction imprint. On October 21, 2014, Simon & Schuster signed a multi-year partnership deal with Amazon.com in negotiations concerning the price of e-books. Simon & Schuster also launched a new science fiction imprint called Simon451 that would publish titles across science fiction and fantasy with an emphasis on ebooks and online communities. The name of the imprint was inspired by Ray Bradbury's book Fahrenheit 451 (the temperature at which books burn). Bradbury's classic is also published by Simon & Schuster.