Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software, and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, comic books, newspapers, and magazines. With the advent of digital information systems, the scope has expanded to include digital publishing such as ebooks, digital magazines, websites, social media, music, and video game publishing.
Holtzbrinck Publishing Group is a privately held German company headquartered in Stuttgart, that owns publishing companies worldwide. Through Macmillan Publishers, it is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies.
Penguin Group is a British trade book publisher and part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann. The new company was created by a merger that was finalised on 1 July 2013, with Bertelsmann initially owning 53% of the joint venture, and Pearson PLC initially owning the remaining 47%. Since 18 December 2019, Penguin Random House has been wholly owned by Bertelsmann.
Simon & Schuster LLC is an American publishing company owned by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924, by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. Along with Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins and Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster is considered one of the 'Big Five' English language publishers. As of 2017 Simon & Schuster was the third largest publisher in the United States, publishing 2,000 titles annually under 35 different imprints.
Macmillan Publishers is a British publishing company traditionally considered to be one of the 'Big Five' English language publishers. Founded in London in 1843 by Scottish brothers Daniel and Alexander MacMillan, the firm would soon establish itself as a leading publisher in Britain. It published two of the best-known works of Victorian era children's literature, Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book (1894).
Pearson Education, known since 2011 as simply Pearson, is the educational publishing and services subsidiary of the international corporation Pearson plc. The subsidiary was formed in 1998, when Pearson plc acquired Simon & Schuster's educational business and combined it with Pearson's existing education company Addison-Wesley Longman. Pearson Education was restyled as simply Pearson in 2011. In 2016, the diversified parent corporation Pearson plc rebranded to focus entirely on education publishing and services, and as of 2023 Pearson Education is Pearson plc's main subsidiary.
Ingram Content Group is an American service provider to the book publishing industry, based in La Vergne, Tennessee. It is a subsidiary of Ingram Industries.
Hachette Book Group (HBG) is a publishing company owned by Hachette Livre, the largest publishing company in France, and the third largest trade and educational publisher in the world. Hachette Livre is a wholly owned subsidiary of Lagardère Group. HBG was formed when Hachette Livre purchased the Time Warner Book Group from Time Warner on March 31, 2006. Its headquarters are located at 1290 Avenue of the Americas, Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Hachette is considered one of the "big five" publishing companies, along with Holtzbrinck/Macmillan, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster. In one year, HBG publishes approximately 1400+ adult books, 300 books for young readers, and 450 audiobook titles. In 2017, the company had 167 books on the New York Times bestseller list, 34 of which reached No. 1.
Lightning Source is a printer and distributor of print-on-demand books. The company is a business unit of Ingram Content Group. Originally incorporated in 1996 as Lightning Print Inc., the company is headquartered in La Vergne, Tennessee, United States. Its UK operations are based in Milton Keynes. They also have operations in Maurepas, France and Melbourne, Australia.
Anobii is a social networking site aimed at readers. Its website was launched in 2006 by Greg Sung. It was acquired by the publisher Mondadori in 2014 from a venture backed by HMV Group, HarperCollins, Penguin, and Random House.
Macmillan Inc. was an American book publishing company originally established as the American division of the British Macmillan Publishers. The two were later separated and acquired by other companies, with the remnants of the original American division of Macmillan present in McGraw-Hill Education's Macmillan/McGraw-Hill textbooks, Gale's Macmillan Reference USA division, and some trade imprints of Simon & Schuster that were transferred when both companies were owned by Paramount Communications.
An ebook, also spelled as e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in electronic form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Although sometimes defined as "an electronic version of a printed book", some e-books exist without a printed equivalent. E-books can be read on dedicated e-reader devices, also on any computer device that features a controllable viewing screen, including desktop computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones.
Apple Books is an e-book reading and store application by Apple Inc. for its iOS, iPadOS and macOS operating systems and devices. It was announced, under the name iBooks, in conjunction with the iPad on January 27, 2010, and was released for the iPhone and iPod Touch in mid-2010, as part of the iOS 4 update. Initially, iBooks was not pre-loaded onto iOS devices, but users could install it free of charge from the iTunes App Store. With the release of iOS 8, it became an integrated app. On June 10, 2013, at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, Craig Federighi announced that iBooks would also be provided with OS X Mavericks in Fall 2013.
Rakuten Kobo Inc., or simply Kobo, is a Canadian company that sells ebooks, audiobooks, e-readers and formerly tablet computers. It is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and is a subsidiary of the Japanese e-commerce conglomerate Rakuten. The name Kobo is an anagram of book.
Penguin Random House LLC is an Anglo-American multinational conglomerate publishing company formed on July 1, 2013, with the merger of Penguin Books and Random House. Penguin Books was originally founded in 1935 and Random House was founded in 1927. It has more than 300 publishing imprints. Along with Simon & Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins and Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Random House is considered one of the 'Big Five' English language publishers.
Zola Books is a New York based social eBook retailer that combines a social network, bookseller and recommendation engine. Founded by literary agents and launched in September 2012. the company was described by The Washington Post as "a venture whose strategy is to combine all three of the e-book world’s major market functions — retailing, curation and social-networking — in an ambitious bid to become a one-stop destination for book lovers on the Web".
United States v. Apple Inc., 952 F. Supp. 2d 638, was a US antitrust case in which the Court held that Apple Inc. conspired to raise the price of e-books in violation of the Sherman Act.
Oyster was a commercial streaming service for digital e-books, available for Android, iOS, Kindle Fire, and NOOK HD/HD+ devices. It was also available on any web browser on a desktop or laptop computer. Oyster held over 1 million books in its library, and as of September 2015, the service was only available in the United States.
Google Play Books, formerly Google eBooks, is an ebook digital distribution service operated by Google, part of its Google Play product line. Users can purchase and download ebooks and audiobooks from Google Play, which offers over five million titles, with Google claiming it to be the "largest ebooks collection in the world". Books can be read on a dedicated Books section on the Google Play website, through the use of a mobile app available for Android and iOS, through the use of select e-readers that offer support for Adobe Digital Editions, through a web browser and reading via Google Home. Users may also upload up to 2,000 ebooks in the PDF or EPUB file formats. Google Play Books is available in 75 countries.
