Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group

Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group
Status Active
Founded 1948
Founder Georg von Holtzbrinck
Country of origin Germany
Headquarters location Stuttgart
Distribution Worldwide
Publication types Books, Newspapers, Academic journals, Magazines
Imprints Many
Owner(s)
  • Monika Schoeller
  • Stefan von Holtzbrinck

[1]

Official website www.holtzbrinck.com

Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck is a Stuttgart-based publishing holding company which owns publishing companies worldwide. The company has published a wide variety of books, from The Satanic Verses of Salman Rushdie to classics by Agatha Christie, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway and John Updike. Other well-known publications of the company include the scientific journal Nature and Scientific American.

On January 15, 2015, Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group / Nature Publishing Group and Springer Science+Business Media announced a merger.[2] It is one of the largest English-language publishers, formerly known a the "Big 6", now known as the "Big Five".

History

Established by Georg von Holtzbrinck in 1948, the group first began as a German book club. In the 1960s, it purchased Droemer, Kindler, Rowohlt and S. Fischer Verlag, two German publishing companies. In 1985, it acquired the retail book division of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, naming it the Henry Holt Book Company. One year later, the company acquired Scientific American magazine for $52.6 million. In 1994, it purchased a majority interest in Farrar, Straus & Giroux from retiring Roger W. Straus, Jr. A year later, it purchased a 70% majority interest in The Macmillan Group, and then the remaining shares in 1999.

In March 2006, Holtzbrinck forced Tor Books, which is owned by Holtzbrinck, to stop making its books available as eBooks via Baen Ebooks because of concerns regarding the lack of digital rights management (DRM). These concerns abated in 2007 and selected Tor titles will soon be available as e-books via Baen and a variety of other online retailers. The company also received a good deal of attention when it bought the then leading German social networking platform StudiVZ in January 2007.

Holtzbrinck has total annual sales of 2.1 billion euros (as of 2005); 49% of sales are in Germany and 23% in North America. It had 2005 earnings before taxes of 142 million euros, and a total of 14,000 employees.

Chairman of the group is Stefan von Holtzbrinck. John Sargent is CEO of Macmillan, the company that unites the US-based businesses of the group.[3]

Subsidiaries and imprints

German newspaper Die Zeit in newsstand

In Germany:

In the United States:

Using the Macmillan name:

In the United Kingdom:

In India:

See also

Notes and references

  1. ↑ Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck. "Management". Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck. Retrieved 1 April 2013.
  2. ↑ "Holtzbrinck Publishing Group and BC Partners Announce Agreement to Merge Majority of MacMillan Science and Education with Springer Science+Business Media", Jan. 15, 2015.
  3. ↑ Book View, Publishing Trends, April 2006
  4. ↑ "MPS | Publishing Solutions | About us". Macmillanpublishingsolutions.com. Retrieved 2013-02-17.

External links

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