Simon & Schuster Publishing Profile
One of the Top Four English-language Book Publishers
Aug 8, 2009
Simon & Schuster, together with Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins, is one of the largest English-language publishers in the world. The company, since 1994 owned by the CBS Corporation (then Viacom), publishes about 2,000 titles annually under 35 different imprints like Scribner, the Free Press and Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.
About Simon & Schuster
Popular authors who call Simon & Schuster their home are Stephen King, Mary Higgins Clark, Michael Moore, Hillary Clinton and many others. Its connection with CBS allows Simon & Schuster to publish many TV tie-ins, especially for popular children’s series like Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob SquarePants, Blue’s Clues and others. About 1,500 people work for Simon & Schuster in offices in the USA, Canada, UK and Australia.
Like many big trade publishers, Simon & Schuster does not accept unsolicited manuscripts or manuscript proposals. Authors who would like to have their work considered for publication by Simon & Schuster are requested to go through an established literary agent.
Simon & Schuster’s History
It is hard to believe today that one of the world’s largest publishing houses got started with such a humble publishing product as a crossword puzzle book. Richard M. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster founded Simon & Schuster in 1924 after discovering a niche in the market – egged on by Simon’s aunt, a crossword puzzle devotee.
Their main product with a first printing of 3,600 copies became an instant success and crossword puzzle books the craze in 1924. In 1939, the publishers realized another one of their profitable ideas that when they launched Pocket Books together with Leon Shimkin and Rober Fair de Graff. They not only established American mass market paperback publishing but also produced the first “instant book” in 1945 – a memorial to F. D. Roosevelt just six days after the president’s death.
These pioneering tendencies continued throughout the decades and many areas of publishing: The company started its children’s imprint in 1943 with the popular Little Golden Books series, Simon & Schuster Audio in 1986 and Simon & Schuster Interactive in 1994. In 2000, Stephen King’s Riding the Bullet was the first work by a major author exclusively published in electronic format. Since 2006, the company is enforcing environmental friendly paper policies and practices in all its offices.
Mergers and Acquisitions at Simon and Schuster
The decades since the 1960s have been heavily characterized by mergers and acquisitions for publishing; first on a national and inter-industry level, then internationally and more broadly focused. Here’s an overview of Simon & Schuster’s most important mergers and acquisitions:
- 1966: Pocket Books and Simon & Schuster merge to form Simon & Schuster, Inc. (S&S)
- 1975: S&S is acquired by international conglomerate Gulf + Western.
- 1984: S&S begins a period of intense acquisitions with more than 60 companies including Prentice Hall. Revenues soar from $200 million in 1983 to $2 billion in 1997.
- 1989: Gulf + Western becomes Paramount Communications.
- 1994: S&S acquires Macmillan; Viacom acquires Paramount.
- 1998: Viacom sells S&S’s educational, professional and reference units to Pearson PLC.
- 2002: S&S is integrated with Viacom’s Paramount motion picture and television studios.
- 2006: S&S becomes a part of CBS after the separation of Viacom and CBS Corporation.
Since the inception of Simon & Schuster, the company’s strength has been the pursuit of new and innovative avenues coupled with an investment in effective marketing. Recent new imprints that tap undeveloped markets are proof of this strategy:
- Howard Books for religious publishing,
- Threshold Editions for conservative readers,
- Atria catering to a Latino/Hispanic audience,
- Strebor for an African-American readership and
- Simon Scribbles, coloring and activity for very young readers.
Excellent resources are the official company history and the Simon & Schuster website. Readers interested in this article may also like to read the publisher profiles of Scholastic, the Penguin Group or HarperCollins.
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