Macmillan Publishers
Encyclopedia
Macmillan Publishers Ltd, also known as The Macmillan Group, is a privately held international
publishing company owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group
. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than thirty others.
and Alexander Macmillan
, two brothers from the Isle of Arran
, Scotland. Daniel was the business brain, while Alexander laid the literary foundations, publishing such great authors as Charles Kingsley
(1855), Thomas Hughes
(1859), Francis Turner Palgrave
(1861), Christina Rossetti
(1862), Matthew Arnold
(1865) and Lewis Carroll
(1865). Alfred Tennyson joined the list in 1884, Thomas Hardy
in 1886 and Rudyard Kipling
in 1890.
As the company evolved, the brothers' vision continued to inspire the publishing of major writers including W.B. Yeats, Rabindranath Tagore
, Sean O'Casey
, John Maynard Keynes
, Charles Morgan
, Hugh Walpole
, Margaret Mitchell
, C. P. Snow
, Rumer Godden
and Ram Sharan Sharma
.
Beyond literature, their vision led to the creation of such enduring titles as Nature
(1869), the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
(1877) and Sir Robert Palgrave
's Dictionary of Political Economy (1894–99).
Macmillan sold its American division in 1896; it reentered the American market in 1954 under the name St. Martin's Press
.
After retiring from politics in 1964, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Harold Macmillan
became chairman of the company, serving until his death in December 1986.
The company was one of the oldest independent publishing houses until 1995 when a 70% share of the company was bought by German media giant Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group
(Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH
). Holtzbrinck purchased the remaining shares in 1999, ending the Macmillan family's ownership of the company.
Since 2007 the CEO of Macmillan has been Annette Thomas.
opened the first Macmillan office in the United States in 1869 and Macmillan sold its U.S. operations to the Brett family, George Platt Brett, Sr.
and George Platt Brett
, Jr. in 1896, resulting in the creation of an American company, Macmillan Publishing
. Even with the split of the American company from its parent company in England, George Brett, Jr. and Harold MacMillan remained close personal friends.
George P. Brett, Jr. made the following comments in a letter dated 23 January 1947 to Daniel Macmillan about his family's devotion to the American Publishing Industry:
Pearson
acquired the Macmillan name in America in 1998, following its purchase of the Simon & Schuster educational and professional group (which included various Macmillan properties). Holtzbrinck purchased it from them in 2001. However, McGraw-Hill continues to market its pre-kindergarten through elementary school titles under its Macmillan/McGraw-Hill brand. U.S. operations of Georg von Holtzbrinck are now known as Macmillan.
The current CEO of Macmillan U.S. is John Turner Sargent, Jr.
s account for three to five percent of total book sales, and are the fasting growing segment of the market. According to The New York Times
, Macmillan and other major publishers "fear that massive discounting [of e-books] by retailers including Amazon
, Barnes & Noble
and Sony
could ultimately devalue what consumers are willing to pay for books." In response, the publisher introduced a new boilerplate contract
for its authors that established a royalty of 20 percent of net proceeds on e-book sales, a rate five percent lower than most other major publishers.
Following the announcement of the Apple iPad on January 27, 2010—a product that comes with access to the iBookstore—Macmillan gave Amazon.com two options: continue to sell e-books based on a price of the retailer's choice (the "wholesale
model"), with the e-book edition released several months after the hardcover edition is released, or switch to the agency
model introduced to the industry by Apple, in which both are released simultaneously and the price is set by the publisher. In the latter case, Amazon.com would receive a 30 percent commission
.
Amazon responded by pulling all Macmillan books, both electronic and physical, from their website (although affiliates selling the books were still listed). On January 31, 2010, Amazon chose the agency model and "capitulated" to the change demanded by Macmillan, in spite of Amazon's belief that the new model leads to e-book prices that are "needlessly high."
International
----International mostly means something that involves more than one country. The term international as a word means involvement of, interaction between or encompassing more than one nation, or generally beyond national boundaries...
publishing company owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group
Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group
Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck is a Stuttgart-based publishing holding company which owns publishing companies worldwide. Holtzbrinck has published everything from Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses to classics by Agatha Christie, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway and John Updike...
. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than thirty others.
History
Macmillan was founded in 1843 by DanielDaniel MacMillan
Daniel MacMillan was a Scottish publisher from the Isle of Arran, Scotland.Daniel MacMillan was born in the Isle of Arran to a crofting family...
and Alexander Macmillan
Alexander Macmillan (publisher)
Alexander Macmillan, , born in Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland. He was a cofounder, in 1843, with his brother Daniel of Macmillan Publishers...
, two brothers from the Isle of Arran
Isle of Arran
Arran or the Isle of Arran is the largest island in the Firth of Clyde, Scotland, and with an area of is the seventh largest Scottish island. It is in the unitary council area of North Ayrshire and the 2001 census had a resident population of 5,058...
, Scotland. Daniel was the business brain, while Alexander laid the literary foundations, publishing such great authors as Charles Kingsley
Charles Kingsley
Charles Kingsley was an English priest of the Church of England, university professor, historian and novelist, particularly associated with the West Country and northeast Hampshire.-Life and character:...
(1855), Thomas Hughes
Thomas Hughes
Thomas Hughes was an English lawyer and author. He is most famous for his novel Tom Brown's Schooldays , a semi-autobiographical work set at Rugby School, which Hughes had attended. It had a lesser-known sequel, Tom Brown at Oxford .- Biography :Hughes was the second son of John Hughes, editor of...
(1859), Francis Turner Palgrave
Francis Turner Palgrave
Francis Turner Palgrave was a British critic and poet.He was born at Great Yarmouth, the eldest son of Sir Francis Palgrave, the historian and his wife Elizabeth Turner, daughter of the banker Dawson Turner. His brothers were William Gifford Palgrave, Inglis Palgrave and Reginald Palgrave...
(1861), Christina Rossetti
Christina Rossetti
Christina Georgina Rossetti was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children's poems...
(1862), Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold was a British poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator...
(1865) and Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
(1865). Alfred Tennyson joined the list in 1884, Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...
in 1886 and Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
in 1890.
As the company evolved, the brothers' vision continued to inspire the publishing of major writers including W.B. Yeats, Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore , sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European Nobel laureate by earning the 1913 Prize in Literature...
, Sean O'Casey
Seán O'Casey
Seán O'Casey was an Irish dramatist and memoirist. A committed socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes.- Early life:...
, John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes, Baron Keynes of Tilton, CB FBA , was a British economist whose ideas have profoundly affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics, as well as the economic policies of governments...
, Charles Morgan
Charles Langbridge Morgan
Charles Langbridge Morgan , was an English-born playwright and novelist of English and Welsh parentage. The main themes of his work were, as he himself put it, "Art, Love, and Death", and the relation between them...
, Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole, CBE was an English novelist. A prolific writer, he published thirty-six novels, five volumes of short stories, two plays and three volumes of memoirs. His skill at scene-setting, his vivid plots, his high profile as a lecturer and his driving ambition brought him a large...
, Margaret Mitchell
Margaret Mitchell
Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell was an American author and journalist. Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937 for her epic American Civil War era novel, Gone with the Wind, which was the only novel by Mitchell published during her lifetime.-Family:Margaret Mitchell was born in Atlanta,...
, C. P. Snow
C. P. Snow
Charles Percy Snow, Baron Snow of the City of Leicester CBE was an English physicist and novelist who also served in several important positions with the UK government...
, Rumer Godden
Rumer Godden
Margaret Rumer Godden OBE was an English author of over 60 fiction and nonfiction books written under the name of Rumer Godden. A few of her works were co-written by her sister, Jon Godden, who wrote several novels on her own...
and Ram Sharan Sharma
Ram Sharan Sharma
Ram Sharan Sharma was an eminent historian of Ancient and early Medieval India. He had taught at Patna University, Delhi University and the University of Toronto and was a senior fellow at School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; University Grants Commission National Fellow...
.
Beyond literature, their vision led to the creation of such enduring titles as Nature
Nature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
(1869), the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, it is the largest single reference work on Western music. The dictionary has gone through several editions since the 19th century...
(1877) and Sir Robert Palgrave
Inglis Palgrave
Sir Robert Harry Inglis Palgrave FRS FSS was a British economist.He was educated at Charterhouse School and the University of Cambridge. In 1843, at the age of 16, he joined the bank of Deacon, Williams and Co. He then in 1845 joined Dawson Turner Turner and Gurney in Yarmouth, the banking firm of...
's Dictionary of Political Economy (1894–99).
Macmillan sold its American division in 1896; it reentered the American market in 1954 under the name St. Martin's Press
St. Martin's Press
St. Martin's Press is a book publisher headquartered in the Flatiron Building in New York City. Currently, St. Martin's Press is one of the United States' largest publishers, bringing to the public some 700 titles a year under eight imprints, which include St. Martin's Press , St...
.
After retiring from politics in 1964, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...
Harold Macmillan
Harold Macmillan
Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, OM, PC was Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 10 January 1957 to 18 October 1963....
became chairman of the company, serving until his death in December 1986.
The company was one of the oldest independent publishing houses until 1995 when a 70% share of the company was bought by German media giant Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group
Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group
Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck is a Stuttgart-based publishing holding company which owns publishing companies worldwide. Holtzbrinck has published everything from Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses to classics by Agatha Christie, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway and John Updike...
(Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH
Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung
Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung is a type of legal entityvery common in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and other Central European countries...
). Holtzbrinck purchased the remaining shares in 1999, ending the Macmillan family's ownership of the company.
Since 2007 the CEO of Macmillan has been Annette Thomas.
Macmillan in the United States
George Edward BrettGeorge Edward Brett
George Edward Brett opened the first American office of Macmillan Publishing called Macmillan & Co. of New York.-Career:Brett was assigned by Alexander Macmillan to create the New York Office in August 1869. Brett was aided in the creation of the New York office, by American firm Messrs Pott &...
opened the first Macmillan office in the United States in 1869 and Macmillan sold its U.S. operations to the Brett family, George Platt Brett, Sr.
George Platt Brett, Sr.
George Platt Brett, Sr. was a British-born chairman and publisher of the American division of Macmillan Publishing. He was best known for serving as publisher, friend, and mentor of American author Jack London. Under Brett's leadership, Macmillan became one of the largest publishers in America. ...
and George Platt Brett
George Platt Brett
George Platt Brett, Jr. served at Chairman of the American division of Macmillan Publishing and secured publishing rights to Gone With the Wind.-Career:...
, Jr. in 1896, resulting in the creation of an American company, Macmillan Publishing
Macmillan Publishers (United States)
Macmillan Publishers USA, also known as Macmillan Publishing, is a privately held American publishing company owned by the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than 30 others....
. Even with the split of the American company from its parent company in England, George Brett, Jr. and Harold MacMillan remained close personal friends.
George P. Brett, Jr. made the following comments in a letter dated 23 January 1947 to Daniel Macmillan about his family's devotion to the American Publishing Industry:
For the record my grandfather was employed by Macmillan's of England as a salesman. He came to the United States with his family in the service of Macmillan's of England and built up a business of approximately $50,000 before he died. He was succeeded . . . by my father, who eventually incorporated The Macmillan Company of New York and built up business of about $9,000,000. I succeeded my father, and we currently doing a business of approximately $12,000,000. So then, the name of Brett and the name of Macmillan have been and are synonymous in the United States.
Pearson
Pearson PLC
Pearson plc is a global media and education company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is both the largest education company and the largest book publisher in the world, with consumer imprints including Penguin, Dorling Kindersley and Ladybird...
acquired the Macmillan name in America in 1998, following its purchase of the Simon & Schuster educational and professional group (which included various Macmillan properties). Holtzbrinck purchased it from them in 2001. However, McGraw-Hill continues to market its pre-kindergarten through elementary school titles under its Macmillan/McGraw-Hill brand. U.S. operations of Georg von Holtzbrinck are now known as Macmillan.
The current CEO of Macmillan U.S. is John Turner Sargent, Jr.
John Turner Sargent
John Turner Sargent, Sr. was president and CEO of the Doubleday and Company publishing house from 1963 to 1978, taking over from the previous president, Douglas Black....
E-books
By some estimates, as of 2009 e-bookE-book
An electronic book is a book-length publication in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, and produced on, published through, and readable on computers or other electronic devices. Sometimes the equivalent of a conventional printed book, e-books can also be born digital...
s account for three to five percent of total book sales, and are the fasting growing segment of the market. According to The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Macmillan and other major publishers "fear that massive discounting [of e-books] by retailers including Amazon
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
, Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble, Inc. is the largest book retailer in the United States, operating mainly through its Barnes & Noble Booksellers chain of bookstores headquartered at 122 Fifth Avenue in the Flatiron District in Manhattan in New York City. Barnes & Noble also operated the chain of small B. Dalton...
and Sony
Sony Connect
The CONNECT Music Store was Sony's music store built within the SonicStage music management application for Microsoft Windows-based personal computers. It was one of the world’s largest online music download stores with over 2.5 million tracks to preview and purchase, with over 10,000 new songs...
could ultimately devalue what consumers are willing to pay for books." In response, the publisher introduced a new boilerplate contract
Standard form contract
A standard form contract is a contract between two parties where the terms and conditions of the contract are set by one of the parties, and the other party is placed in a "take it or leave it" position with little or no ability to negotiate terms more favorable to it.Examples of standard form...
for its authors that established a royalty of 20 percent of net proceeds on e-book sales, a rate five percent lower than most other major publishers.
Following the announcement of the Apple iPad on January 27, 2010—a product that comes with access to the iBookstore—Macmillan gave Amazon.com two options: continue to sell e-books based on a price of the retailer's choice (the "wholesale
Wholesale
Wholesaling, jobbing, or distributing is defined as the sale of goods or merchandise to retailers, to industrial, commercial, institutional, or other professional business users, or to other wholesalers and related subordinated services...
model"), with the e-book edition released several months after the hardcover edition is released, or switch to the agency
Agency (law)
The law of agency is an area of commercial law dealing with a contractual or quasi-contractual, or non-contractual set of relationships when a person, called the agent, is authorized to act on behalf of another to create a legal relationship with a third party...
model introduced to the industry by Apple, in which both are released simultaneously and the price is set by the publisher. In the latter case, Amazon.com would receive a 30 percent commission
Commission (remuneration)
The payment of commission as remuneration for services rendered or products sold is a common way to reward sales people. Payments often will be calculated on the basis of a percentage of the goods sold...
.
Amazon responded by pulling all Macmillan books, both electronic and physical, from their website (although affiliates selling the books were still listed). On January 31, 2010, Amazon chose the agency model and "capitulated" to the change demanded by Macmillan, in spite of Amazon's belief that the new model leads to e-book prices that are "needlessly high."
Divisions
The company is made up of over 50 different divisions operating in five areas of publishing:- EducationEducationEducation in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
publishing including English language teachingEnglish language learning and teachingEnglish as a second language , English for speakers of other languages and English as a foreign language all refer to the use or study of English by speakers with different native languages. The precise usage, including the different use of the terms ESL and ESOL in different countries, is...
(as Macmillan EducationMacmillan EducationMacmillan is one of the world’s leading publishers of English Language teaching and school curriculum materials, with over 150 years of publishing experience. Based in Oxford, UK, and operating in over 40 countries worldwide.-History:...
) - Academic publishingAcademic publishingAcademic publishing describes the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in journal article, book or thesis form. The part of academic written output that is not formally published but merely printed up or posted is often called...
including referenceReferenceReference is derived from Middle English referren, from Middle French rèférer, from Latin referre, "to carry back", formed from the prefix re- and ferre, "to bear"...
(as Palgrave MacmillanPalgrave MacmillanPalgrave Macmillan is an international academic and trade publishing company, headquartered in Basingstoke, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom and with offices in New York, Melbourne, Sydney, Hong Kong, Delhi, Johannesburg. It was created in 2000 when St...
) - ScienceScienceScience is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
, technological and medical publishing (as Nature Publishing GroupNature Publishing GroupNature Publishing Group is an international publishing company that publishes academic journals, online databases, and services across the life, physical, chemical and applied sciences and clinical medicine...
), including NatureNature (journal)Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
and other journals - FictionFictionFiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...
and non-fictionNon-fictionNon-fiction is the form of any narrative, account, or other communicative work whose assertions and descriptions are understood to be fact...
book publishing (as Pan Macmillan), under the imprintImprintIn the publishing industry, an imprint can mean several different things:* As a piece of bibliographic information about a book, it refers to the name and address of the book's publisher and its date of publication as given at the foot or on the verso of its title page.* It can mean a trade name...
s Pan BooksPan BooksPan Books is an imprint which first became active in the 1940s and is now part of the British-based Macmillan Publishers owned by German publishers, Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group....
, PicadorPicador (imprint)Picador is an imprint of Pan Macmillan in the United Kingdom and Australia and of Macmillan Publishing in the United States. Both companies are owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group....
, Macmillan New WritingMacmillan New WritingMacmillan New Writing is an imprint of the British publishing company Pan Macmillan. Designed to attract previously unpublished authors, it offers aspiring novelists 20% of royalties from the sale of their book but no advance on signing...
, Papermac, Kingfisher, Macmillan, Sidgwick & JacksonSidgwick & JacksonSidgwick & Jackson is an imprint of publishing company Pan Macmillan. It was founded in Britain in 1908. Notable early Sidgwick and Jackson authors include poet Rupert Brooke and novelist E.M. Forster...
, Campbell Books, Boxtree, Ltd., and Macmillan Children's Books - MPS Limited Provides publishing solutions from print and digital publishing solutions, to advert creation and magazine production, to fulfillment solutions for books and journals.
- Publishing Services through MPS Technologies offering Content Delivery, Web analyticsWeb analyticsWeb analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage....
, and Technology related services as well as distributionDistribution (business)Product distribution is one of the four elements of the marketing mix. An organization or set of organizations involved in the process of making a product or service available for use or consumption by a consumer or business user.The other three parts of the marketing mix are product, pricing,...
and productionProduction, costs, and pricingThe following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to industrial organization:Industrial organization – describes the behavior of firms in the marketplace with regard to production, pricing, employment and other decisions...
.
Additional resources
- Macmillan – A Publishing Tradition by Elizabeth James ISBN 0-333-73517-X
See also
- The Big Six book publishers:
- HachetteHachette Book Group USAHachette Book Group is a publishing company owned by Hachette Livre, the largest publishing company in France, and the second largest 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...
, Penguin Putnam, HarperCollinsHarperCollinsHarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...
, Random HouseRandom HouseRandom House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
and Simon & SchusterSimon & SchusterSimon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins...
- Hachette
External links
- Official website
- Official website of Macmillan/McGraw Hill
- The Macmillan Group from the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group website
- Official website of MPS Technologies
- MPS eServices formerly eMacmillan Software services