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| Parent company | Penguin Group |
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| Founded | 1838 |
| Founder |
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| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | New York City, U.S. |
| Publication types | Books |
| Imprints | Amy Einhorn, Marian Wood, Coward-McCann |
| Official website | penguin |
G. P. Putnam's Sons is an American book publisher based in New York City, New York. Since 1996, it has been an imprint of the Penguin Group. [1]
The company began as Wiley & Putnam with the 1838 partnership between George Palmer Putnam and John Wiley, whose father had founded his own company in 1807.[ citation needed ]
In 1841, Putnam went to London where he set up a branch office in Covent Garden, the first American company ever to do so. [2] In 1848, he returned to New York, where he dissolved the partnership with John Wiley and established G. Putnam Broadway, publishing a variety of works including quality illustrated books. Wiley began John Wiley (later John Wiley and Sons), which is still an independent publisher to the present day.
In 1853, G. P. Putnam & Co. started Putnam's Magazine with Charles Frederick Briggs as its editor.
On George Palmer Putnam's death in 1872, his sons George H., John and Irving inherited the business and the firm's name was changed to G. P. Putnam's Sons. [3] Son George H. Putnam became president of the firm, a position he held for the next fifty-two years.
In 1874, the company established its own book printing and manufacturing office, set up by John Putnam and operating initially out of newly leased premises at 182 Fifth Avenue. [4] This printing side of the business later became a separate division called the Knickerbocker Press, and was relocated in 1889 to the Knickerbocker Press Building, built specifically for the press in New Rochelle, New York. [5]
On the death of George H. Putnam in 1930, the various Putnam heirs voted to merge the firm with Minton, Balch & Co., who became the majority stockholders. George Palmer Putnam's grandson, George P. Putnam (1887–1950), left the firm at that time. Melville Minton, the partner and sales manager of Minton Balch & Co., became acting president and majority stockholder of the firm until his death in 1956. In 1936, Putnam acquired the publisher Coward-McCann (later Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, after John Geoghegan its long-time chairman), [6] and ran it as an imprint into the 1980s. Upon Melville Minton's death, his son Walter J. Minton took control of the company.
In 1965, G. P. Putnam's Sons acquired Berkley Books, a mass market paperback publishing house.
MCA bought Putnam Publishing Group and Berkley Publishing Group in 1975. [7] Phyllis E. Grann who was running Pocket Books for Simon & Schuster was brought on board in 1976 as editor-in-chief. [8] Grann worked with MCA executive Stanley Newman on a financial model to make Putnam profitable. [8] This model emphasized publishing key authors annually and took Putnam from $10 million in revenue to over $100 million by 1983. [8] While keeping the list at 75 titles a year, Putnam focused on winners like Tom Clancy whose book Red Storm Rising sold nearly a million copies in 1986. [8] Putnam along with other publishers in the 1980s moved to a heavy discount hardcover model to keep up with demand and sales through bookstore chains and price clubs. [8] Phyllis Grann was promoted to CEO of Putnam in 1987 becoming the first woman to be CEO of a major publishing house. [8] By 1993, the publisher was making $200 million in revenue. [8]
In 1982, Putnam acquired the respected children's book publisher, Grosset & Dunlap from Filmways. [1] Also in 1982, Putnam acquired the book publishing division of Playboy Enterprises, which included Seaview Books. [9] [10]
In the 1990s ownership of Putnam changed a number of times. MCA was bought by Matsushita Electric in 1990. [11] Then the Seagram Company acquired 80% of MCA from Matsushita and then shortly thereafter Seagram changed the name of the company to Universal Studios, Inc. [12] [13] The new owners had no interest in publishing, but Phyllis Grann stepped in and was able to broker the deal for Putnam to be merged with Penguin Group in 1996, a division of British publishing conglomerate, Pearson PLC [8] Putnam and the Penguin Group formed Penguin Putnam Inc. In 2001, Grann abruptly left after speculation over tensions with Pearson CEO Marjorie Scardino. [8]
In 2013, Penguin merged with Bertelsmann's Random House, forming Penguin Random House. [1]
Universal Studios, Inc. is an American media and entertainment conglomerate and is owned by NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast.
Random House, is an imprint and publishing group of Penguin Random House. Founded in 1927 by businessmen Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer as an imprint of Modern Library, it quickly overtook Modern Library as the parent imprint. Over the following decades, a series of acquisitions made it into one of the largest publishers in the United States. In 2013, it was merged with Penguin Group to form Penguin Random House, which is owned by the Germany-based media conglomerate Bertelsmann. Penguin Random House uses its brand for Random House Publishing Group and Random House Children's Books, as well as several imprints.
Doubleday is an American publishing company. It was founded as the Doubleday & McClure Company in 1897. By 1947, it was the largest book publisher in the United States. It published the work of mostly U.S. authors under a number of imprints and distributed them through its own stores.
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., commonly known as Wiley, is an American multinational publishing company that focuses on academic publishing and instructional materials. The company was founded in 1807 and produces books, journals, and encyclopedias, in print and electronically, as well as online products and services, training materials, and educational materials for undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education students.
Hutchinson Heinemann is a British publishing firm founded in 1887. It is currently an imprint which is ultimately owned by Bertelsmann, the German publishing conglomerate.
George Palmer Putnam was an American publisher and author. He founded the firm G. P. Putnam's Sons and Putnam's Magazine. He was an advocate of international copyright reform, secretary for many years of the Publishers' Association, and founding superintendent of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Chatto & Windus is an imprint of Penguin Random House that was formerly an independent book publishing company founded in London in 1855 by John Camden Hotten. Following Hotten's death, the firm would reorganize under the names of his business partner Andrew Chatto and poet William Edward Windus. The company was purchased by Random House in 1987 and is now a sub-imprint of Vintage Books within the Penguin UK division.
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.
Berkley Books is now an imprint of the Penguin Group.
Pocket Books is a division of Simon & Schuster that primarily publishes paperback books.
E. P. Dutton was an American book publishing company. It was founded as a book retailer in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1852 by Edward Payson Dutton. Since 1986, it has been an imprint of Penguin Group.
Grosset & Dunlap is a New York City-based publishing house founded in 1898.
Frederick Woodruff "Ted" Field is an American media mogul, record executive, entrepreneur and film producer.
Price Stern Sloan or PSS! was a publisher that was founded in Los Angeles in the early 1960s to publish the Mad Libs that Roger Price and Leonard Stern had concocted during their stint as writers for Tonight Starring Steve Allen and also the Droodles. Along with their partner Larry Sloan, they expanded the company into children's books, novelty formats, and humor. Some of the books they published include movie tie-ins for films such as Happy Feet, Wallace and Gromit, Catwoman, and Elf, How to Be a Jewish Mother (1964), and other properties such as Serendipity, Mr. Men and Little Miss and Wee Sing. Today, PSS! still publishes approximately ten Mad Libs books a year. Mr. Stern and Mr. Sloan went on to found Tallfellow Press in Los Angeles.
Angus & Robertson (A&R) is a major Australian bookseller, publisher and printer. As book publishers, A&R has contributed substantially to the promotion and development of Australian literature. The brand currently exists as an online shop owned by online bookseller Booktopia. The Angus & Robertson imprint is still seen in books published by HarperCollins, a News Corporation company.
T. Fisher Unwin was the London publishing house founded by Thomas Fisher Unwin, husband of British Liberal politician Jane Cobden in 1882.
Penguin Random House LLC is a British-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.
Cemp Investments was the primary holding company and investment vehicle for, and named after, the four children of Samuel Bronfman: Charles Bronfman, Edgar Bronfman, Aileen "Minda" Bronfman de Gunzburg, and Phyllis Lambert, also known as the Montreal branch of the Bronfman family. Cemp became one of the largest privately owned companies in Canada. At its peak, it controlled tens of billions in dollars of assets in major distilling, commercial real estate development, oil and gas, and entertainment companies across North America.
Phyllis E. Grann is a former book editor and publishing executive. She was the first female CEO of a major publishing firm, Penguin Putnam, and one of the most commercially successful publishers in recent history. She was a long-time editor for Knopf Doubleday, and a former CEO of the Putnam Berkley Group and was also CEO of Penguin Putnam. Grann was responsible for publishing many notable and bestselling authors at Penguin including A. Scott Berg, Judy Blume, Tom Clancy, Patricia Cornwell, Sue Grafton, Daniel Silva, and Kurt Vonnegut. At Doubleday Grann acquired and edited Jeffrey Toobin, Tina Brown, Bob Herbert, Ayelet Waldman and Tim Weiner. At Knopf she edited John Darnton.
MCA Inc. (originally an initialism for Music Corporation of America) was an American media conglomerate founded in 1924. Originally a talent agency with artists in the music business as clients, the company became a major force in the film industry, and later expanded into television production. MCA published music, booked acts, ran the MCA Records music label, represented film, television and radio stars, and eventually produced and sold television programs to the three major television networks, especially NBC.
Media related to G. P. Putnam's Sons at Wikimedia Commons| Bertelsmann Home Entertainment |
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