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Simon & Schuster

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Simon & Schuster
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U.S. publishing company. It was founded in 1924 by Richard L. Simon (1899 – 1960) and M. Lincoln Schuster (1897 – 1970), whose initial project, the original crossword-puzzle book, was a best seller. Among their other innovations was Pocket Books, the first U.S. paperback line, which was launched in 1939. The company came to publish a wide variety of books, including many best sellers and prizewinners. In 1975 it was sold to Gulf + Western Inc.; it was later acquired by Viacom Inc. and in 2005 became a division of CBS Corp. With the 1998 sale of its educational, professional, international, and reference divisions, Simon & Schuster concentrated again on fiction and nonfiction for the general reader.

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Simon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln ("Max") Schuster. It is one of the four largest English language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin, and HarperCollins. It publishes over two thousand titles annually under 35 different imprints.

Contents

History

Simon & Schuster headquarters at 1230 Avenue of the Americas, Rockefeller Center, New York City

Crossword puzzles first appeared in the New York World in 1913, and soon became a popular feature in newspapers. In 1924, Simon's aunt, a crossword puzzle devotee, asked Simon whether there was a book of these puzzles that she could give to a friend. Simon discovered that none had been published, and, with Schuster, launched a company to exploit the opportunity.[1]

To attract attention, the book came with a pencil attached.[1] The advertising campaign implied that it was about to become a new fad:

The ad proved prophetic, and crossword puzzles were indeed the craze of 1924.[1] Simon & Schuster continues to be the preeminent U.S. publisher of crossword puzzle books.

In 1939, with Robert Fair de Graff, Simon & Schuster founded Pocket Books, America's first paperback publisher.

In 1942, Simon & Schuster, or "Essandess" as it is called in the initial announcement, launched the Little Golden Books series in cooperation with the Artists and Writers Guild.[2] Simon & Schuster's partner in the venture was the Western Printing and Lithographing Company which handled the actual printing. Western Printing bought out Simon & Schuster's interest in 1958.

In 1944, Marshall Field III, owner of the Chicago Sun newspaper, purchased Simon & Schuster and Pocket Books. Following Field's death, in 1957 his heirs sold the company back to Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster, while Leon Shimkin and James M. Jacobson acquired Pocket Books.[3]

In subsequent years, Gulf+Western would acquire the company. G+W would change its name to Paramount Communications in 1989, and be sold to the original Viacom in 1994 (allowing S&S to launch several new imprints in conjunction with channels owned by Viacom's MTV Networks). Viacom would split into 2 companies at the end of 2005: one called CBS Corporation (which inherited S&S), and the other retaining the Viacom name. Despite the split, National Amusements retains majority control of both firms. As such, S&S continues to publish books based on Viacom properties.[4][3]

Personalities

Editors

Some of its prominent editors have been Robert Gottlieb and Michael Korda.

Authors

Recent bestsellers published by the company include the work of Jesse Duplantis, Stephen King, Mary Higgins Clark, Bob Woodward, David McCullough, Jimmy Carter, Malalai Joya, Bob Dylan, Holly Black, Richard Rhodes, Michael Moore, Hillary Clinton, and Glenn Beck. Current Simon & Schuster authors in the UK include Richard Madeley, Mark Radcliffe, Jackie Collins and Mark Gatiss.

Imprints

Simon & Schuster logo, circa 1961

In addition to the main Simon & Schuster imprint are the following:

Adult

Young adults and children

  • Aladdin Paperbacks
  • Atheneum Books - initially a publishing house and adult imprint[6], it now publishes children's titles, formerly just part of its output.[7]
  • Fireside Books
  • Libros Para Niños
  • Little Simon
  • Little Simon Inspirations
  • Margaret K. McElderry Books
  • Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers (including Paula Wiseman Books and Ruckus)
  • Simon Pulse
  • Simon Scribbles
  • Simon Spotlight
  • Simon Spotlight Entertainment

Footnotes

  1. ^ a b c Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920's. Pg 165. ISBN 0060956658.
  2. ^ "Announcing Little Golden Books." Publishers' Weekly. September 19, 1942, pp. 991-94.
  3. ^ a b Business Timeline
  4. ^ [http://people.brandeis.edu/~lamiller/cbs.html CBS (USA)
  5. ^ Rutten, Tim (2008-08-16). "The extreme-right way to make a buck". The Los Angeles Times. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/la-oe-rutten16-2008aug16,0,5171785.column. Retrieved 2008-08-16. 
  6. ^ Alfred A. Knopf's Atheneum - the publisher of Pulitzer Prize Winners Edward Albee, Charles Johnson, and Theodore H. White - which included a children's division set up in 1961 by Jean Karl. Atheneum merged with Charles Scribner's Sons to become The Scribner Book Company in 1978. (This acquisition included the Rawson Associates imprint.) Scribner was later acquired by Macmillan in 1984, which was in turn puchased by Simon & Schuster in 1994.
  7. ^ Company History at simonsays.com

References

  • "Simon & Schuster Inc." International Directory of Company Histories. 4:671-672.
  • "Simon & Schuster Inc." International Directory of Company Histories. 19:403-405.

See also

External links

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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
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