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Publishing Divisions and Imprints

Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing

The Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group includes a number of publishing units that offer books in several formats. Each unit has its own publisher, editorial group and publicity department. Common sales and business departments support all the units. The managing editorial, art, production, marketing, and subsidiary rights departments have staff members dedicated to the individual imprints.

Imprints:

Atria Books

Atria Books was launched in 2002 as a new hardcover and paperback imprint within Simon & Schuster, Inc.  We chose the name Atria Books for our new imprint because its many definitions encompass our publishing aims: to create an environment where our authors and their books can flourish, and to connect authors with their readers in the same way the ancient city of Atria once connected to the sea.  Atria Books has established itself as a house that is open to new ideas as an atrium is open to the sky. 

Since its founding, Atria has published more than 165 New York Times bestsellers, and each season the Atria list brings together a group of established, brand-name writers and original, new voices.  Atria is the publishing home to many major bestselling authors including Jodi Picoult, Vince Flynn, T.D. Jakes, Jennifer Weiner, Shirley MacLaine, Brad Thor, Dr. Spencer Johnson, Dr. Zhi Gang Sha, Zane, and Rhonda Byrne’s international bestselling phenomenon The Secret. 

In recent years, Atria has placed a strategic emphasis on publishing books for diverse audiences, through the acquisition of Strebor Books, the launch of Atria Books Espanol and Atria International Editions, and a co-publishing agreement with Beyond Words.  Atria Books also publishes literary fiction and topical nonfiction in trade paperback under the Washington Square Press imprint. 

Find out more.

Free Press

Free Press publishes approximately 85 new titles per year and boasts a list of bestselling authors including Ben Mezrich, James Risen, Peter Bergen, Ann Rule, Richard A. Clarke, Marcus Buckingham, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Lee Eisenberg, Haven Kimmel, Stephen R. Covey, Dr. Phil McGraw, Dr. Mehmet Oz and Dr. Michael Roizen.

With a distinguished history that spans more than 50 years of publishing ground-breaking, influential and controversial books, Free Press publishes nonfiction and fiction for the general reader in hardcover and paperback. The imprint has a well-deserved reputation for publishing in a wide range of categories including politics, current affairs, history, religion, narrative nonfiction, business and self-help, and recently, fiction by some of today’s most cutting edge writers.

Free Press books consistently generate news, win critical acclaim, and achieve national bestsellerdom. In 2006 the imprint published YOU: On a Diet by Michael F. Roizen, M.D. and Mehmet C. Oz. M.D., the fastest selling book in Simon & Schuster history. In 2004, it published the #1 bestseller Against All Enemies by Richard A. Clarke which made front-page headlines and sold more than 600,000 copies. In 2003, Free Press published two of the five finalists for the non-fiction National Book Award, including the winner, Waiting for Snow in Havana by Carlos Eire. Recent finalists for National Book Critics Circle awards include Ron Powers’ Mark Twain, James Tobin’s Ernie Pyle’s War and John D’Emilio’s Lost Prophet.

Howard Books

Founded in 1969, Howard Publishing was among the first Christian publishers to appear in the CBA industry. Originally known for its songbooks and specialized denominational materials, Howard became a full inspirational trade book publisher in the 1980’s. In 2006 Howard Publishing was acquired by Simon and Schuster and underwent the subtle name change to Howard Books.

Having won numerous awards for innovative designs and inspirational content, Howard has also appeared on bestseller lists more than three hundred times including #1 on the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and Wall Street Journal bestsellers lists. In addition, Howard has been voted “Best Christian Place to Work” for seven years in a row.

Today, Howard Books, based in Nashville, TN is the bestselling, award-winning Christian division of Simon & Schuster with multiple publishing categories including inspirational, current events, and fiction. Notable authors include Rick Warren, Davis Bunn, William Bennett, Debbie Macomber, Zig Ziglar, Ruth Graham, Kathy Ireland, Karen Young, Point of Grace, Henry Cloud, Sandi Patty, CeCe Winans, Chip Ingram, Ralph Reed, and many others.

Pocket Books

Pocket Books, America’s first paperback publisher, was established in 1939 by publishing veteran Robert deGraff. Believing that Americans were ready for a more convenient and inexpensive way to read, he took his dream of creating a wider audience for books to Richard L. Simon and Max Schuster. Together, they changed the publishing industry forever.

On June 19, 1939 in New York City, Pocket Books published its first list of ten books, consisting of reprints of some of the most popular books of the day as well as literary classics. Copies were shipped to drugstores, department stores, and newsstands, where they were sold for the then unheard-of price of 25¢ per copy. This marked the first time that such a diverse selection of inexpensive books was available to the general public.

Today, Pocket Books continues to be an industry pioneer with an innovative and expansive publishing program that includes Pocket Books Hardcovers, Threshold Editions, Downtown Press, MTV Books, G-Unit, and Star Trek. In 2005, Pocket Books introduced the Premium Edition paperbacks, a line of high quality, oversized mass market books featuring bestselling authors and designed to bridge the gap between the traditional mass market and trade paperback formats.

Scribner

Founded in 1846 by Charles Scribner and Isaac Baker, the Scribner company first published religious books, later expanding to magazines, the most famous being Scribner's Monthly (1870-1881),"an illustrated magazine for the people." The magazine and its successor, Scribner's Magazine (1887-1939), attracted fresh young writers who also wrote books for the company.

As Charles Scribner’s Sons, and under legendary editors such as Maxwell Perkins and John Hall Wheelock, the house published many of the giants of nineteenth and twentieth-century American literature, including Henry James, Edith Wharton, Ring Lardner, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Many of these authors and their classic works remain in print today as a mainstay of the Scribner list.

Today, Scribner continues to publish a distinguished list with a varied roster of authors that includes Annie Proulx, whose novel The Shipping News (1993) won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; Frank McCourt, whose memoir Angela's Ashes (1996), became a mainstay of the New York Times bestseller list, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was followed by the bestselling ‘Tis and Teacher Man; and Don DeLillo’s Underworld (1997). Scribner is also the home bestselling authors Stephen King, Kathy Reichs, and Linda Fairstein, and to the Joy of Cooking, revised in 2006 for a 75th Anniversary edition.

Simon & Schuster

Simon & Schuster was founded in April 1924 when Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster pooled their resources and published Simon & Schuster's first book, The Cross Word Puzzle Book, capitalizing on the crossword craze of the time and packaged with a pencil to aid readers in solving the puzzles. What was a revolutionary idea at the time went on to become a runaway bestseller and by October, S&S had published four additional crossword puzzle collections, and a modern publishing company was launched.

In its early years, S&S achieved commercial success from such groundbreaking mega-sellers as Will and Ariel Duran's The Story of Philosophy and Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Over the years, the name Simon & Schuster has also grown to signify the much larger publishing enterprise of Simon & Schuster, Inc, but the Simon & Schuster trade imprint has remained as a cornerstone to the business and one of the most venerated brand names in the world of publishing. It is widely known as a powerhouse publisher of general fiction and nonfiction for readers of all tastes.

In 1974, Simon & Schuster published the landmark bestseller All the President's Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, and to this day the imprint has a well-earned reputation as a premier publisher of current affairs, history, and biography. Other well-known and influential nonfiction authors who call Simon & Schuster home include Pulitzer Prize winners David McCullough, Taylor Branch, and Doris Kearns Goodwin, and journalist Bob Woodward. Simon & Schuster is the publisher of bestselling novelist Mary Higgins Clark, the Pulitzer prize winning novelist Larry McMurtry, President Jimmy Carter, Bob Dylan, and health and fitness expert Bob Greene.

Strebor

Karen Hunter Publishing
In 1997, Karen Hunter wrote her first book, I Make My Own Rules with rapper LL Cool J. It was a national best seller. Fifteen books and six best sellers later, she is applying her successful formula of compelling content matched with sizzling personalities to her own publishing house -- a joint venture with Pocket Books.

The Touchstone and Fireside Group
The Touchstone and Fireside imprints were established in 1970, in response to changing consumer demand, as an outlet for Simon & Schuster to publish books in paperback which it believed were not appropriate for mass-market distribution. The imprints, with a shared publishing, editorial, and publicity staff, published original and reprinted works (from Simon & Schuster and other publishing houses) in trade paperback format.

In 2003, Touchstone and Fireside changed focus to publish hardcover and original trade paperbacks, while continuing to do a small number of reprints from other houses in the industry, with a smaller, much more focused list.

The Touchstone imprint continues to publish works of serious nonfiction in the areas of current affairs, history, memoir, women's studies, science, economics, and philosophy. Touchstone has expanded its mandate to include bestselling fiction from authors such as Philippa Gregory, J A Jance, Kathleen McGowan, Santa Montefiore, Victoria Chistopher Murray, and Anne Easter Smith.

The Fireside imprint has traditionally published practical and inspirational books on subjects such as self-help, parenting and childcare, popular psychology, health and medicine. The list includes how-to titles on just about any topic including games, sports, cooking, gardening, finding a job, and running a business. Among the bestselling authors that are published by this imprint are Sean Covey, Danny Dryer, Rick Lavoie, and Jay McGraw. Under its current mission, Fireside has also embraced popular culture with bestsellers from celebrities such as Fantasia, Allison DuBois, Carolyn Kepcher and Paris Hilton.

In 2007 the imprint will launch Touchstone Faith, featuring books of religious and inspirational content.