Macmillan Publishers

Macmillan Publishers
Parent company Holtzbrinck Publishing Group
Founded 1843 (1843)
Founder Daniel Macmillan
Alexander Macmillan
Country of origin United Kingdom
Headquarters location London, England
Publication types Books, academic journals, magazines
Official website macmillan.com
2008 conference booth

Macmillan Publishers Ltd (occasionally known as the Macmillan Group) is an international publishing company owned by Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than thirty others.

History

This logo appeared in Leslie Stephen's biography of Alexander Pope, published by Macmillan & Co in 1880.

Macmillan was founded in 1843 by Daniel and Alexander Macmillan, two brothers from the Isle of Arran, Scotland. Daniel was the business brain, while Alexander laid the literary foundations, publishing such notable 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.[1]

Other major writers published by Macmillan included W. B. Yeats, Rabindranath Tagore, Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Seán O'Casey, John Maynard Keynes, Charles Morgan, Hugh Walpole, Margaret Mitchell, C. P. Snow, Rumer Godden and Ram Sharan Sharma.

Beyond literature, the company created 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 established an office in New York City. It sold its American division in 1896, which published as the Macmillan Company.

Macmillan Publishers re-entered 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.[2] He had been with the family firm as a junior partner from 1920 to 1940 (when he became a junior minister), and from 1945 to 1951 while he was in the opposition in Parliament.

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 Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. Holtzbrinck purchased the remaining shares in 1999, ending the Macmillan family's ownership of the company.

In May 2015, London-based Macmillan Science and Education merged with Berlin-based Springer Science+Business Media to form Springer Nature, jointly controlled by Holtzbrinck Publishing Group and BC Partners.

Macmillan in the United States

George Edward Brett 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, also called the Macmillan Company. 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 acquired the Macmillan name in America in 1998, following its purchase of the Simon & Schuster educational and professional group (which included various Macmillan properties).[3] Holtzbrinck purchased it from them in 2001.[4] McGraw-Hill continues to market its pre-kindergarten through elementary school titles under its Macmillan/McGraw-Hill brand. The US operations of Georg von Holtzbrinck are now known as Macmillan.

In the 1990s several British publishing companies reached the Russian market, and the list included Macmillan, Pearson-Longman, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and Express Publishing.

One of the leading companies is Macmillan, that started by selling British English dictionaries and textbooks that were adapted for Russian readers.

Macmillan has a representation in Russia since 2001 that organizes educational activities, support the increasing demands for learning English, and collaborate with Russian authors in publishing English textbooks that conform to the requirements of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation while being on par with world's educational standards.

Their website provides Russian teachers and students with an easy access for tests, competitions, contests and information on scheduled online seminars and live conferences.

E-books and price fixing charges

By some estimates, as of 2009 e-books account for three to five per cent of total book sales, and are the fastest growing segment of the market.[5] 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 per cent of net proceeds on e-book sales, a rate five per cent lower than most other major publishers.[5]

Following the announcement of the Apple iPad on 27 January 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 per cent commission.[6]

Amazon responded by pulling all Macmillan books, both electronic and physical, from their website (although affiliates selling the books were still listed). On 31 January 2010, Amazon chose the agency model preferred by Macmillan.[7]

In April 2012, the United States Department of Justice filed United States v. Apple Inc., naming Apple, Macmillan, and four other major publishers as defendants. The suit alleged that they conspired to fix prices for e-books, and weaken Amazon.com's position in the market, in violation of antitrust law.[8]

In December 2013, a federal judge approved a settlement of the antitrust claims, in which Macmillan and the other publishers paid into a fund that provided credits to customers who had overpaid for books due to the price-fixing.[9]

Corruption charges

In 2010, Macmillan Education submitted to an investigation on grounds of fraudulent practices.[10] The Macmillan division admitted to bribery in an attempt to secure a contract for an education project in southern Sudan.[10]

As stated by a spokesman for the World Bank, "Macmillan admitted engaging in bribes in an attempt to get a contract to print textbooks for the education rehabilitation project in south Sudan"[10]

As a direct result of the investigation, sanctions were applied by the World Bank Group, namely a 6-year debarment (reduced from 8 years due to an early acknowledgment of misconduct by the company) declaring the company ineligible to be awarded Bank-financed contracts.[11]

Divisions

Macmillan is currently under two divisions - Springer Nature and Macmillan Publishers.

See also

Notes and references

  1. ↑ "About Pan Macmillan". Pan Macmillan UK. Retrieved 2016-09-30.
  2. ↑ "Harold Macmillan (1894 - 1986)". BBC.
  3. ↑ Publishers Weekly, Publishersweekly.com
  4. ↑ Bookseller, Allbusiness.com
  5. 1 2 Rich, Motoko (28 October 2009). "Macmillan Lowers E-Book Payments for Authors". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-02-11.
  6. ↑ Motoko Rich and Brad Stone (31 January 2010). "Publisher Wins Fight With Amazon Over E-Books". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-02-11.
  7. ↑ The Amazon Kindle team (31 January 2010). "Macmillan E-books". Kindle Community. Amazon.com. Retrieved 2010-02-11.
  8. ↑ Mui, Ylan Q. and Hayley Tsukayama (11 April 2012). "Justice Department sues Apple, publishers over e-book prices". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2014-06-01.
  9. ↑ Molina, Brett (25 March 2014). "E-book price fixing settlements rolling out". USA Today. Retrieved 2014-06-01.
  10. 1 2 3 "Macmillan admits to bribery over World Bank Sudan aid deal". Telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved 2016-03-17.
  11. ↑ "The World Bank Group Debars Macmillan Limited for Corruption in World Bank-supported Education Project in Southern Sudan". World Bank. Retrieved 2016-03-17.

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