Or is it six now? I hear the term frequently and just realized I couldn't list them. Seems to me they all own each other!
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Who are the Big Five?
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In no particular order, they are:
Penguin Random House
HarperCollins
Hachette
Simon & Schuster
Macmillan
Penguin Random House
HarperCollins
Hachette
Simon & Schuster
Macmillan
I will insist with my dying breath that they should have gone with Random Penguin when they merged.
Beyond just their names, once you start to look into who they are in more detail, you find that they contain several specialty imprints inside them. For instance, one for romance, one for horror, one for detective, etc. Rather like chocolate-chip cookies!
In the sci-fi/fantasy field Locus Magazine's annual yearly review (which comes out each Feb. 1st) lists the number of SF/F titles published as follows for the top 6.
267 - Penguin
224 - Tor
196 - Harper/Collins
141 - Random/Ball/Bantam
121 - Hachette/OrbitUS
116 - S&S Pocket
followed by
78 - Baen
76 - Harlequin
69 - St. Martin's
50 - Disney/Hyperion
49 - DAW
and so on for almost 200 publishers who publish at least a few SF/F titles a year in a mix of hardback, trade paperbacks, and mass-market paperbacks, both new and reissues.
In the sci-fi/fantasy field Locus Magazine's annual yearly review (which comes out each Feb. 1st) lists the number of SF/F titles published as follows for the top 6.
267 - Penguin
224 - Tor
196 - Harper/Collins
141 - Random/Ball/Bantam
121 - Hachette/OrbitUS
116 - S&S Pocket
followed by
78 - Baen
76 - Harlequin
69 - St. Martin's
50 - Disney/Hyperion
49 - DAW
and so on for almost 200 publishers who publish at least a few SF/F titles a year in a mix of hardback, trade paperbacks, and mass-market paperbacks, both new and reissues.
The Amazon imprints, while not included in the Big 5, make up another list of major worldwide publishers.
There are many publishers which publish books worldwide, but are not part of the Big Five.
True. I was just thinking of one that competes, and, in several cases, has been able to sell more books for their authors than the big 5.
Again, there are many other publishers which are not part of the Big Five which manage to sell plenty of books. They might not all cover the whole world but once foreign rights are sold, the book gets a good presence around a lot of the world.
Canongate, for example. Independent presses like them do very well for their authors.