The Big 5 Publishers

ExposingCorruption

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What are the names of the Big 5 NY Publishers and is there a list of all their subsidiaries (aren't those called "imprints?")

Is it often that a book that is sold to a smaller publishing house becomes a best seller?
 

mscelina

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Google is your friend. You should try it. It's a heck of a lot quicker to google your question and find out the answers for yourself than to wait for other people to provide you the information.
 

Unimportant

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The "NY Big 5" you probably mean are the conglomerates -- AOL Time Warner, Pearson, Bertelsmann, Holtzbrinck, Viacom, News Corp, and Torstar. Each conglomerate owns several publishing houses. Most publishing houses have several imprints. I don't think there's a definitive list somewhere, if for no other reason than that the congloms sell things back and forth so the situation of who owns what does change regularly.

No, it's not often that any book becomes a best seller, and it's even more infrequent that it would come from a small press.
 

beatlesluv

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I did see one a few years ago in WRiter's Market. I'll have to see if i still have that magazine at home.

I think Random House, Simon and Shuster, Harper Collins, Penguin Putnam?
Yep. Harper Collins = Harper's Bazaar as well.

Penguin Group is big one.

S&S for sure.

Doubleday etc and so on
 

johnrobison

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The big three, Random House, Penguin, and Harper Collins, (listed in order of size) control 75% of the US bestseller market between them. Each has many imprints and you sell to the imprint, not to the "company."

So, for example, you could query half a dozen editors in different imprints of Random House. They will all bid agressively against one another, but there are some rules.

1) All the big houses have divisions. For example, here are Random's divisions http://www.randomhouse.biz/ourpublishers/ If you scroll down their list, you'll see Crown - my division. You could query Doubleday and Crown because they are separate divisions, and each could offer a bid for your book. You can't query multiple editors within a division and have them bid against one another, though you can have them review the book and choose between them.

2) If two companies are bidding, say Penguin and RH, bids can run free. If you have an auction situation, and the top bidders are from the same company (example: Doubleday and Crown) you have to stop the bidding and choose a winner per the policy of the major houses.

If these houses are your target there are advantages to a long established agent in the City.
 

scope

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The five major book publishing companies (the conglomerates) are:

Harper Collins
Penguin Putnam
Random House
Simon & Schuster
Time Warner

Not an exact estimate, but in total the five control between 300 and 400 publishing companies with different names and produce about one-half of all new books published each year (about 200,000).