Simon & Schuster
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Jean-François Millet
Le Semeur (The Sower)
Simon & Schuster logo, circa 1961.
Usage restricted.
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Simon & Schuster, Inc., is a publishing house founded in New York in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln ("Max") Schuster, notable for its publication of crossword puzzle books.
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[edit] Origins
Crossword puzzles first appeared in the New York World in 1913. By 1924, they had been a weekly feature for many years. According to Frederick Lewis Allen's Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920's. Simon's aunt, a crossword devotee, asked him whether there was a book of these puzzles that she could give to a friend. Simon discovered that none had been published, and, with Schuster, launched a company to exploit the opportunity.
Their first book was marketed cleverly. To attract attention, it came with a pencil attached to it. Their advertising campaign implied that it was about to become a new fad:
The ad proved prophetic, and crossword puzzles were indeed the craze of 1924.
Simon & Schuster soon became a publisher of books of all kinds, and currently publishes over two thousand titles annually under 35 different imprints.
In 1939, with Robert Fair de Graff, Simon & Schuster founded Pocket Books, America's first paperback publisher.
In 1942, Simon and Schuster, or "Essandess" as it is called in the initial announcement, launched the Little Golden Books series in cooperation with the Artists and Writers Guild. Simon & Schuster's partner in the venture was the Western Printing and Lithographing Company which handled the actual printing. Western Printing bought out Simon and Schuster's interest in 1958.
Some of its near-legendary editors have been Robert Gottlieb and Michael Korda.
Simon & Schuster continues to be the preeminent U. S. publisher of crossword puzzle books.
[edit] Currently
Simon & Schuster is currently a division of the media giant CBS Corporation (formerly Viacom).
[edit] Imprints
- Simon & Schuster (the main imprint)
and
- Atria Books
- Free Press
- Howard Books
- Kaplan
- Pocket Books
- Scribner
- Simon Spotlight Entertainment
- Strebor
- The Touchstone and Fireside Group
for young adults and children
- Aladdin Paperbacks
- Atheneum Books
- Libros Para Niños
- Little Simon®
- Little Simon Inspirations
- Margaret K. McElderry Books
- Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
- Simon Pulse
- Simon Spotlight®
- Simon Spotlight Entertainment
[edit] Trivia
- From around 1991, until November 2003, Simon and Schuster also had a division, named Simon and Schuster Interactive, devoted to games for computers and video game consoles such as Xbox, GameCube, and Playstation. They published such games as Outlaw Golf, Real War, Real War: Rogue States, and the Deer Avenger series, Soldiers of Anarchy and Eve Online
- In 2001, Simon and Schuster published Now, Discover Your Strengths the first book to print a unique password on each jacket that enables the reader to go online and test him or herself in the concepts from the book. This book was a phenomenal best seller, spawning a trend that Simon and Schuster has continued with best selling titles like The Emotional Intelligence Quick Book.
[edit] See Related
- "Announcing Little Golden Books." Publishers' Weekly. September 19, 1942. Pages 991-994.
- "Simon & Schuster Inc." International Directory of Company Histories. 4:671-672.
- "Simon & Schuster Inc." International Directory of Company Histories. 19:403-405.
