The Big 5
You may or may not know about the Big 5. So we wanted to drop a little info to keep you in the loop.
These big companies have dozens of imprints (think Rocafella being a label under Def Jam). If you’ve been around, you know that Penguin Group and Random House merged to form Penguin Random House. Well, there is currently a deal on the table (being blocked by the US) for PRH to acquire Simon & Schuster. If this purchase goes through, PRH will be in a major position for dominance in the industry.
Take a look at your favorite author’s book. (If they aren’t self-published). Who is their publisher? It could be an imprint of one of the Big 5.
What is an imprint? An imprint is basically a brand under a larger umbrella. These big publishers have such a global reach, it makes sense to have smaller brands that can cater to specific audiences. Dynamic Image’s goal is to become an imprint of one of the Big 5.
Here’s a little tea on the Big 5.
Penguin Random House
Established in 2013 with Penguin Group and Random House merging. Headquartered in NYC with operations across 6 continents. Publishes 70,000 digital and 15,000 print titles annually, with more than 100,000 eBooks available worldwide. Their site assures they are committed to creating a positive impact on the world by making the best books of their kind, in the best possible way, for every kind of reader.
Macmillan
Macmillan is a British company that was founded in 1843. Macmillan Publishers is a global trade publishing company operating in over 70 countries. It operates eight divisions in the US: Celadon Books; Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Flatiron Books; Henry Holt and Company; Macmillan Audio; Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group; St. Martin’s Press and Tor/Forge. Their writers come from a vast array of literary backgrounds and have won awards including the Nobel Prize, the Man Booker Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Printz Award. In the UK, Australia, India, and South Africa, Macmillan publishes under the Pan Macmillan name.
Harper Collins
Headquartered in New York, HarperCollins has publishing operations in 17 countries. With two hundred years of history and more than 120 branded imprints around the world, HarperCollins publishes approximately 10,000 new books every year in 16 languages, and has a print and digital catalog of more than 200,000 titles. The house of Mark Twain, the Brontë sisters, Thackeray, Dickens, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Maurice Sendak, Shel Silverstein, and Margaret Wise Brown, HarperCollins has a long and rich history that reaches back to the early nineteenth century and offers our publishing team a depth of experience that few others can rival—from the modest print shop that James and John Harper opened in 1817 to the global house we are today.
HarperCollins was founded by brothers James and John Harper in New York City in 1817 as J. and J. Harper, later Harper & Brothers. In 1987, as Harper & Row, it was acquired by News Corporation. The worldwide book group was formed following News Corporation's 1990 acquisition of the British publisher William Collins & Sons.
Hachette Book Group
HBG is a leading US trade publisher and a division of the third largest trade and educational book publisher in the world, Hachette Livre. A global publishing company based in France, Hachette Livre is a subsidiary of the French media company, Lagardère. HBG is headquartered in New York City with offices in Boston, MA; Lebanon, IN; Nashville, TN; North Adams, MA; Boulder, CO; Philadelphia, PA; Berkeley, CA; Portland, OR; and Chapel Hill, NC. HBG also owns Hachette Book Group Canada, Inc., a marketing and publicity company based in Toronto. In 2020, the company had 196 books on the New York Times bestseller list, 26 of which reached #1.
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster was founded in 1924 by Richard L. (Dick) Simon and M. Lincoln (Max) Schuster. Their initial project was a crossword puzzle book, the first ever produced, which was a runaway bestseller. From that, the company has grown to become a multifaceted publishing house that publishes approximately 2000 titles annually. Its publishing groups and divisions – the Simon & Schuster Publishing Group, The Scribner Publishing Group, the Atria Publishing Group, the Gallery Publishing Group, Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, Simon & Schuster Audio, and Simon & Schuster Digital, and international companies in Australia, Canada, India and the United Kingdom — are home to some of the most distinguished imprints and recognizable authors in the world of publishing. Simon & Schuster and its imprints have won 56 Pulitzer Prizes, and been the recipient of numerous National Book Awards, National Book Critics Circle Awards, Grammy Awards, and Newbery and Caldecott Medals.