Crown

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Publishing_Group

Addresses: 449 Fourth Avenue (1934-1936); 444 Fourth Avenue (1936-1941); 419 Fourth Avenue (1941-?)

2018 - Penguin Random House merges Random House Publishing Group with Crown Publishing Group, (precipitating the departure of group publisher Maya Mavjee) which now has three groups:

  • Crown Trade (Crown, Archetype, Broadway, Tim Duggan Books, Hogarth, and Three Rivers)

  • Illustrated and prescriptive nonfiction (Clarkson Potter, Harmony, Rodale, and Ten Speed)

  • Christian, business, and conservative books (Convergent, Currency, Forum, Image, Multnomah, and WaterBrook)

2010 - new Crown Publishing Group head Maya Mavjee restructures the group into distinct editorial divisions: general interest trade (Crown, Broadway Books), category/brand publishing (Crown Archetype, Harmony, Crown Business, Crown Forum), four-color and lifestyle (Clarkson Potter, Potter Craft Potter Style, Watson-Guptill, Monacelli Press, Ten Speed Press), trade paperbacks (Three Rivers Press, Broadway paperbacks), and religious (WaterBrook Multnomah, Doubleday Religion)

2009 - Bertelsmann splits off the nontrade units, including audio and information units, from the Crown Publishing Group in advance of new Crown publisher Maya Mavjee's arrival in December 2009

1988 - Random House purchases Crown Publishing Group, still privately owned by the Wartels, which includes the Outlet Book Company; the mail-order division Publishers Central Bureau; hardcover imprints Crown, Harmony Books, and Clarkson N. Potter, Inc.; the mass market paperback line Pageant Books; three book clubs, and a number of multimedia outlets, in August 1988

1940 - Crown enters into an agreement with reprint publishers to handle their reprint lines (including Macmillan's Imperial Editions, Harcourt's Harbrace Editions, the Modern Library Giants, Houghton Mifflin's Eagle Editions, Farrar & Rinehart's dollar books, and Simon & Schuster reprints) for mailing-piece promotions and newspaper advertising campaigns

1936 - Nat Wartels and Robert Simon found Crown Publishers, a subsidiary of the Outlet Book Company, developing it into a general trade house that published original works

1933 - Nat Wartels and Robert Simon, both employees of Greenberg, Publisher, found the Outlet Book Company, a wholesale remainder business, initially as a branch of Greenberg but later in 1934 as their own outfit after they purchase Outlet's stock and name

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Emanuelle Wartels, PW, Sept. 23, 1939, at 1268 (obituary of brother of Nat Wartels, co-founder of the Outlet Book Company, who helped found Outlet's subsidiaries Phoenix Book Company in October 1934 and later Crown Publishers and Gramercy Publications).

Obituary Notes: Robert Simon, PW, Jan. 24, 1966, at 278.

Crown Publishers: The First Ten Years, PW, Nov. 16, 1946, at 2806-2810.

Hiram Haydn, WORDS & FACES (HBJ 1974).

Calvin Reid & John F. Baker, Random House, in Surprise Move, Acquires Crown Publishing Group, PW, Aug. 26, 1988, at 14 & 16 & 18.

Crown Split, PW, Dec. 14, 2009, at 6 (graphic showing all Crown Publishing Group units).

Jim Milliot, Mavjee Reshapes Crown Publishing, PW, May 3, 2010, at 7.

John Maher, Random House, Crown Publishing Groups Merge, PW, Oct. 22, 2018, at 4.