Virgin Books
Encyclopedia
Virgin Books is a United Kingdom book publisher 90% owned by the publishing group Random House
, and 10% owned by Virgin Enterprises
, the company originally set up by Richard Branson
as a record company.
fans for their Target Books
imprint; Virgin Books was incorporated into WH Allen in 1989, but in 1991 WH Allen was renamed Virgin Publishing Ltd.
Virgin Publishing's early success came with the Doctor Who New Adventures
novels, officially-licensed full-length novels carrying on the story of the popular science-fiction television series following its cancellation in 1989. Virgin published this series from 1991 to 1997, as well as a range of Doctor Who reference books from 1992 to 1998 under the Doctor Who Books imprint.
In recent times the company is best known for its commercial non-fiction list, which includes business, health and lifestyle, music, film, and celebrity biographies. Richard Branson's autobiography Losing My Virginity (ISBN 9780753513002), released in 1998, was an international bestseller at the time, and continues to sell well. His follow up title Business Stripped Bare is published September 2008 (ISBN 9781905264438). Virgin Business Guides included titles by Robert Craven
, Paul Barrow and Rachelle Thackray. More recently the company has enjoyed success with Robert H Frank's The Economic Naturalist (2008, ISBN 9780753513385), where the author had his economics students pose interesting questions from everyday life and explain them through economics.
Random House
, through its United Kingdom division, acquired a 90% stake in the company in March 2007. In November 2009, Virgin became an independent imprint within Ebury Publishing
, a division of the Random House Group.
Random House
Random 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 10% owned by Virgin Enterprises
Virgin Group
Virgin Group Limited is a British branded venture capital conglomerate organisation founded by business tycoon Richard Branson. The core business areas are travel, entertainment and lifestyle. Virgin Group's date of incorporation is listed as 1989 by Companies House, who class it as a holding...
, the company originally set up by Richard Branson
Richard Branson
Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson is an English business magnate, best known for his Virgin Group of more than 400 companies....
as a record company.
History
Virgin established its book publishing arm in the late 1970s; in the latter part of the 1980s Virgin purchased several existing companies, including WH Allen, well-known among Doctor WhoDoctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
fans for their Target Books
Target Books
Target Books was a British publishing imprint, established in 1973 by Universal-Tandem Publishing Co Ltd, a paperback publishing company. The imprint was established as a children's imprint to complement the adult Tandem imprint, and became well known for their highly successful range of...
imprint; Virgin Books was incorporated into WH Allen in 1989, but in 1991 WH Allen was renamed Virgin Publishing Ltd.
Virgin Publishing's early success came with the Doctor Who New Adventures
Virgin New Adventures
The Virgin New Adventures were a series of novels from Virgin Publishing based on the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who...
novels, officially-licensed full-length novels carrying on the story of the popular science-fiction television series following its cancellation in 1989. Virgin published this series from 1991 to 1997, as well as a range of Doctor Who reference books from 1992 to 1998 under the Doctor Who Books imprint.
In recent times the company is best known for its commercial non-fiction list, which includes business, health and lifestyle, music, film, and celebrity biographies. Richard Branson's autobiography Losing My Virginity (ISBN 9780753513002), released in 1998, was an international bestseller at the time, and continues to sell well. His follow up title Business Stripped Bare is published September 2008 (ISBN 9781905264438). Virgin Business Guides included titles by Robert Craven
Robert Craven
Robert Craven is an English author of business books and a popular keynote speaker. His area of focus is entrepreneurship and business growth.-Career:...
, Paul Barrow and Rachelle Thackray. More recently the company has enjoyed success with Robert H Frank's The Economic Naturalist (2008, ISBN 9780753513385), where the author had his economics students pose interesting questions from everyday life and explain them through economics.
Random House
Random House
Random 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,...
, through its United Kingdom division, acquired a 90% stake in the company in March 2007. In November 2009, Virgin became an independent imprint within Ebury Publishing
Ebury Publishing
Ebury Publishing is a division of the Random House Group Ltd, and is a well-known publisher of general non-fiction books in the UK.Under its umbrella are the imprints BBC Books, Ebury Press, Rider, Time Out and Vermilion—each with their own, distinct identity and specialist areas of...
, a division of the Random House Group.
Imprints
Other popular ranges have included various erotic fiction lines:- Black Lace specializes in eroticaEroticaErotica are works of art, including literature, photography, film, sculpture and painting, that deal substantively with erotically stimulating or sexually arousing descriptions...
and erotic romance written by female authors specifically for heterosexual female readers. The imprint does not publish novels written by men partly as a marketing scheme, partly to better appeal to their target demographic. The books explore women's sexuality as well as such themes as BDSMBDSMBDSM is an erotic preference and a form of sexual expression involving the consensual use of restraint, intense sensory stimulation, and fantasy power role-play. The compound acronym BDSM is derived from the terms bondage and discipline , dominance and submission , and sadism and masochism...
, group sexGroup sexGroup sex is sexual behavior involving more than two participants. Group sex can occur amongst people of all sexual orientations and genders...
and bisexualityBisexualityBisexuality is sexual behavior or an orientation involving physical or romantic attraction to both males and females, especially with regard to men and women. It is one of the three main classifications of sexual orientation, along with a heterosexual and a homosexual orientation, all a part of the...
. The imprint began publishing in 1993, has published over 250 titles and sold over three million books. In 2006, Black Lace developed three specific lines within the imprint: contemporary, historical and paranormal. Black Lace also publishes short story anthologies, novella collections and in 2007 launched its first trilogy, a series of werewolf erotica by Mathilde Madden. The imprint marked its fifteen year anniversary in 2008 with re-issues of several of its original novels. In 2009, Virgin announced that Black Lace would add no new titles in 2010. - Nexus Books, sado-masochistic pornographyPornographyPornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
written mostly for men who have sex with women, and women who have sex with men or women. In 2009, Virgin announced that Nexus would add no new titles in 2010. - Idol for gay men, no longer existing
- Sapphire for lesbians, no longer existing