Pan Macmillan
Pan Macmillan is one of the largest fiction and non-fiction book publishers in the UK and includes the imprints of Pan, Picador and Macmillan Children’s Books. The company has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in over 70 countries.
Macmillan
Macmillan was founded in 1843 by two brothers from Arran in Scotland. Their first two books were works of non-fiction - A.R. Craig’s The Philosophy of Training and The Three Questions by W.H. Miller. Macmillan’s first big commercial success came ten years later with the publication of Charles Kingsley’s Westward Ho!, followed swiftly by Thomas Hughes’s Tom Brown’s Schooldays, both of which laid the foundations for a strong fiction list. For more than 150 years the company has prospered and its authors have included Thomas Hardy, W.B. Yeats, J.M. Keynes, Rudyard Kipling, Hugh Walpole, James Hilton, Margaret Mitchell, Rumer Godden, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Rebecca West, Colin Dexter, Iain Banks and Mary Wesley.
Today the Macmillan imprint publishes major British and Commonwealth fiction authors in hardback including Wilbur Smith, Jeffrey Archer, Clare Francis, Peter F. Hamilton, Minette Walters, Ken Follett and James Herbert. It also publishes major international fiction authors such as Sue Grafton, Valerio Massimo Manfredi, Richard North Patterson, David Baldacci and Martin Cruz Smith.
The core of Macmillan's non-fiction portfolio consists of serious history, biography and memoir, politics, current affairs, narrative non-fiction and sport. The imprint publishes such diverse authors as Andrew Marr, William Shawcross, Adam Hochschild, Robert Service, Michael Burleigh, Madeleine Albright, Nelson Mandela, John Simpson, Rebecca Skloot, Ronnie Wood, James Cracknell, Ben Fogle and Jon Krakauer.
Pan
Pan Books was founded by Alan Bott, owner of The Book Society, and registered as a limited company in September 1944. Over the course of the next 8 years a minority share of 48% was picked up by a consortium of four leading publishers: William Collins, Macmillan, Wm Heinemann and - for a short while - Hodder and Stoughton.
In its first three years, Pan Books issued a few paperbacks and a small range of hardbacks. The first, in 1945, was a special edition of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.
In 1947 Pan started publishing mass-market paperbacks at a time when Penguin, founded 12 years earlier, was the only major competitor. About 50 titles appeared in the first year, with initial print runs in the region of 25,000 copies. The use of full-colour pictorial covers created a tremendous impact.
Within a year of publishing its first list, Pan's total sales in the home and export market were 2 million copies. By 1964 this figure had risen to around 15 million copies, some 3 million of which were Ian Fleming titles. In 1976, only twelve years later, worldwide sales stood at 30 million copies. In 1987, Collins and Heinemann sold their interests and Pan became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Macmillan.
The Pan imprint publishes a very broad list of popular fiction and non-fiction. Its list of bestselling authors, most of which it shares with Macmillan, is impressive and includes Wilbur Smith, Jeffrey Archer, Minette Walters, Douglas Adams, Clare Francis, Ken Follett, Dick Francis, Scott Turow, Richard North Patterson, James Herbert, Jackie Collins, Valerio Massimo Manfredi, Sue Grafton and David Baldacci.
In non-fiction, Pan has a strong reputation particularly in the areas of history, military history and biography. Notable recent publications in paperback include Max Hasting's superlative Armageddon, A Mad World, My Masters by John Simpson, Ulrika Jonsson's Honest, Michael Burleigh's The Third Reich (winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction in 2001) and Roy Jenkins' magnificent biography of Churchill (Biography of the Year, British Book Awards 2002).
Pan boasts an impressive list of original paperbacks. These include novels by new authors as well as non-fiction titles in health and fitness and astrology, reference books and travel guides. Pan is also the market leader in puzzle books including the bestselling The Daily Telegraph: Sudoku books.
Picador
Picador was launched in 1972 with the aim of publishing outstanding international writing in paperback. Early Picador authors included Angela Carter, Samuel Beckett and Thomas Pynchon. The first Picador million-copy bestseller was Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, followed by Alex Haley's Roots.
As the list grew, Picador began to publish distinctive paperback originals, establishing a reputation for narrative non-fiction, travel writing, American fiction and contemporary memoir. These included Dispatches by Michael Herr, Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story, P.J. O'Rourke's Holidays in Hell and Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho. Picador also published in paperback the 1981 Booker winner, Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie, and the 1985 Booker winner, The Bone People by Keri Hulme.
In 1990, Picador started publishing its own hardcovers, and in 1992, four of the six novels on the Booker shortlist were Picador paperbacks, including the winner, The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje. In 1996, Graham Swift won the Booker Prize for Last Orders - a Picador first in hardback.
In the last few years, Picador has continued to grow in all areas, launching phenomena like Helen Fielding's era-defining creation, Bridget Jones, and Alice Sebold's multi-million-copy bestseller, The Lovely Bones. Tim Winton, Colm Toibin and Trezza Azzopardi have all been shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Alan Hollinghurst won in 2004 with The Line of Beauty. Nobel Laureate V.S. Naipaul's books are now all in print with Picador, and alongside the established names on the list such as John Banville, Cormac McCarthy and Tim Binding, new talent continues to flourish: Charlotte Mendelson (author of the prizewinning Daughters of Jerusalem), Justin Haythe (his debut, The Honeymoon, was longlisted for the Booker Prize), Kate Long (The Bad Mother's Handbook has now sold more than 300,000 copies) and Daniel Mason (his exquisite novel, The Piano Tuner, has been a bestseller all over the world), to name but a few.
Picador has maintained its reputation for groundbreaking non-fiction, publishing reportage, literary biography and memoir by Andrea Ashworth, Philip Gourevitch, Jonathan Raban, Jon Ronson, Dave Eggers, Rory Stewart, Clive James, Jason Elliot and Jonathan Coe among others; it has also established a formidable poetry list - Picador poets include Carol Ann Duffy, Kathleen Jamie, Robin Robertson, John Stammers, Paul Farley and, most recently, Mark Haddon.
Tor
Tor UK, an imprint of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC and part of the holtzbrinck group, is a London-based publisher of hardcover and paperback books committed to science fiction and fantasy writing. Books from Tor have won every major award in the science fiction and fantasy fields, and for the last fourteen years in a row the company has been named Best Publisher in the Locus Poll, the largest consumer poll in science fiction.
The Tor imprint was launched in March 2003 in Britain as part of a shared worldwide venture. The aim of the UK Tor launch was to provide a dedicated platform for the exceptional talent Pan Macmillan has been nurturing in this field, and to expand what has become one of the most prestigious lists in the country.
Mantle
Mantle is a new hardback and trade paperback imprint which launched on 7 May 2010. Its launch year includes new novels from Scott Turow, C. J. Sansom, Kate Morton and John Banville writing as Benjamin Black. It promises to feature the very best in crime, thriller, general and literary fiction and narrative non-fiction from major established bestsellers to the very best debuts who will become the stars of the future.
Macmillan Children’s Books
Macmillan Children’s Books is committed to publishing a wide range of quality books for 0-16 year olds. It publishes fiction, non-fiction, poetry, picture and novelty books. It aims to promote the enjoyment of reading and to build the readers of tomorrow. The list includes classics such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Just William, a wealth of award-winning authors and illustrators such as Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, Eva Ibbotson, Frank Cottrell Boyce, Elizabeth Laird and Michael Morpurgo; and enduringly popular authors like Meg Cabot, Georgia Byng and Gwyneth Rees.
The poetry list includes the hugely popular The Works series of anthologies, collections by Charles Causely, and Julia Donaldson – the author of the phenomenally successful The Gruffalo. Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler have together produced an enviable list of picture books that are loved by children and adults alike. Macmillan Children’s Books' strong picture book list contains exciting new talents like Emily Gravett and Rebecca Harry, as well as trusted favourites like Nick Sharratt and Jill Murphy. The non-fiction list includes Tony Robinson, Philip Ardagh and Glenn Murphy, and is the Science Museum’s publishing partner.
Campbell Books
Campbell Books is a recognised leader in the specialist pre-school market and was founded by Rod Campbell, the creator of many successful books for babies and toddlers, including the world-famous toddler classic, Dear Zoo. Now an imprint of Macmillan Children’s Books, the Campbell Books portfolio has grown to include some of the most innovative, high novelty books for pre-schoolers which stimulate the senses and aid development.
Campbell Books are bright, bold and interactive, and allow readers plenty of opportunities to stroke, feel and join in as they enjoy the simple stories and rhymes. They come in all shapes, sizes and materials. They are rich in novelty features, including sound-chips, rattles, jigsaw pieces and magic wand drawing pens. The list features top illustrators like Axel Scheffler, Louise Comfort and Helen Stephens, revolutionary novelty like the Buggy Buddies series, and also boasts one of the most exciting new pre-school characters, Poppy Cat, created by Lara Jones.
Kingfisher
Kingfisher is a leading international publisher of illustrated, full-colour information books, with a readership that ranges from pre-schoolers taking their first steps into the world of non-fiction to young adults who find Kingfisher’s extensive series of comprehensive encyclopedias to be an essential reference support to their studies.
The Kingfisher list has a first-class reputation for providing authoritative and accessible educational series alongside innovative and memorable stand-alone information books. Kingfisher truly has a global reach. Most of its series – which explore subjects as diverse as natural history, science and technology, geography, history, art, sports and even philosophy – are published around the world in 20 languages or more.
One of the jewels in the Kingfisher list is the unique and ground-breaking Basher Science series. This fast-growing collection of compact science books has sold more than 500,000 copies around the world since 2007, attracting a devoted army of fans and proving that authoritative reference, innovative design and imaginative writing are a wining way to make learning fun.
Boxtree
Boxtree was established in 1990 and soon grew into a successful independent publishing house. It became one of Pan Macmillan's imprints in June 1996. It started out with a focus on 'TV tie-ins' (books tied to television programmes) and quickly diversified into film tie-ins, pop music, sport, biographies and humour. Together with Sidgwick & Jackson it provides focus for Pan Macmillan’s brand, humour, entertainment and media publishing. Key publishing partners include Mock the Week, the Daily Telegraph puzzle range, New Covent Garden Food company, Modern Toss, and Match!, the number one bestselling football magazine in the UK.
Early successes as an independent publisher included the original Mr Bean’s Diary, official Take That! books and Joan Collins: My Secrets. Since joining the Macmillan group, its bestsellers have included companion books to many of world’s biggest film successes – Borat, Titanic, The Blair Witch Project, Gladiator, Jurassic Park, Evita, Spider-Man, Austin Powers, the international television phenomenon Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (Its producers, Celador, were awarded a Golden Pan in 2001 for sales of over 1.4 million copies of Millionaire Quiz Books), the Christmas bestseller Crap Towns, two bestselling volumes of Mock the Week one-liners, and poetry from the ever-popular licensed humour character, Purple Ronnie.
Sidgwick & Jackson
Sidgwick & Jackson was originally established in 1908 and was the publisher of poet Rupert Brooke and novelist E.M. Forster. It was bought by Macmillan from Lord Forte in the mid-eighties after many years of operating as a successful, independent Bloomsbury publishing house. It specialises in commercial and popular non-fiction with a strong personality or marketable identity.
Sidgwick & Jackson was once known for publishing both fiction and non-fiction and was responsible for launching the careers of Lynda LaPlante, Shirley Conran and Judith Krantz. Now its high-profile subjects range from Bruce Forsyth to Ulrika Jonsson, the Krays to Michael Hutchence, Frank Sinatra to Rita Marley, Alec Guinness to Shane MacGowan and Benny Hill to Madonna. It shares Pan Macmillan’s entertainment portfolio with Boxtree, specialising in high-profile biography and the history of popular culture together with contemporary commercial non-fiction.
It also features the long-standing Sidgwick Military list, supported by an association with the Imperial War Museum and National Army Museum, publishing a number of acclaimed books drawing from the museums’ matchless archive of photographs, letters, diaries and other documents, as well as the non-fiction works of Tom Clancy.
Macmillan Digital Audio
Launched as Macmillan Audio Books in 1995 Macmillan's audio publishing grew over the years and was relaunched as Macmillan Digital Audio in 2007 to reflect our developing focus on digital products.
We pride ourselves on our reputation as audio publishers of an outstanding list of international best-selling adult and children’s authors. These include Wilbur Smith, Jeffrey Archer, Ken Follett, David Baldacci and Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, to name just a few.
Rodale
More than 60 years ago, the founder of Rodale Inc., J.I.Rodale, started an organic farm in Pennsylvania, USA, in the strong belief that it is as important to prevent illness and increase wellbeing through the pursuit of healthy eating and lifestyle as it is to treat illness once it has occurred. In those days J.I. was a visionary, but now his ideas are becoming progressively more mainstream as people around the world seek balance throughout their lives and to live life to the full. Today Rodale is not only 100 per cent in the hands of J.I.'s descendants but is also the largest family-owned publishing house in North America and the acknowledged leader in the fast-growing area of healthy living information.
The UK branch of Rodale joined Pan Macmillan in 2007 and comprises of highlights from the US list, along with a large and growing list of locally commissioned authors. The vision of Rodale at Pan Macmillan is consistent and focused: to help and empower people to take their health into their own hands and provide them with useful and practical information to help them change their lives. With this in mind, Rodale UK publishes in the area of quality self-help health and wellbeing. Some of Rodale’s bestselling titles include The Flat Belly Diet, The Art of Concentration, Healing Without Freud or Prozac, Mood Mapping, The Greek Doctor’s Diet and Men’s Health books.
Rodale's website can be found here >
