Big Five

A new business imprint, Simon Acumen, will publish books that help readers navigate the “dynamic world of work.”

Trade/consumer publishing revenue from adult and children’s sales declined by 1 percent in 2023 versus 2022.

It will publish Latinx/Latine/Hispanic authors in English and Spanish, both fiction and nonfiction.

Delacorte, a division of Penguin Random House, is launching an imprint dedicated to contemporary love stories for teenagers.

The publisher partly attributed its sales increase to “strong market growth for downloadable audiobooks,” as well as a new Spotify partnership.

Publishers Weekly crunched the numbers on their 2023 hardcover lists and found that the Big Five held about 85% of bestseller slots overall.

The initiative was announced by outgoing CEO Michael Pietsch as part of his annual letter to authors.

The publisher was founded by Louise Hay in 1984 and has a backlist of 1,500 titles.

Is it the changing of the guard or the changing of publishing culture—and what do such changes mean to authors?

KKR’s history as a private equity investor clarifies little about its intent for Simon & Schuster.

At the end of its fiscal year 2023, HarperCollins sales are down 10 percent; earnings are down 45 percent.

Inklore will publish manga, manhua, manhwa, webcomics adaptations, and light novels in collaboration with Del Rey UK.

Last month, we noted that HarperCollins and KKR (a private equity firm) are among the bidders for Simon & Schuster.

Publishers love to see authors provide data that offers marketing insights they would otherwise not have.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the two current frontrunners to buy Simon & Schuster are HarperCollins and private-equity firm KKR.

PRH, the biggest of the Big Five publishers, has acquired Callisto Media, a startup publisher that’s fallen on hard times after their venture capital funding dried up.

An imprint of Simon & Schuster, Scribner has published some poetry in the past, but it never had a formal

HarperCollins CEO Brian Murray said the publisher is experimenting with generative AI for translated and illustrated book projects.

For Penguin Random House in 2022, organic sales fell 3.3 percent as book markets normalized from pandemic highs.

The new imprint, AUWA Books, will feature an eclectic mix of fiction and nonfiction.

Hachette and HarperCollins have both announced voluntary programs to encourage long-time employees to resign or retire.

Simon & Schuster exceeded $1 billion in sales for the first time ever in 2022—an increase of 18.5 percent over the prior year.

After being on strike for three months, the HarperCollins union has reached a tentative agreement with HarperCollins.

Simon & Schuster’s parent company, Paramount, is said to be shopping for a private equity buyer to avoid further antitrust scrutiny.

As of this writing, the union, which consists of about 200 HarperCollins employees, has been striking for 60 days.