Holtzbrinck Publishing Group facts for kids
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| Parent company | Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH |
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| Status | Private |
| Founded | 1948 |
| Founder | Georg von Holtzbrinck |
| Country of origin | Germany |
| Headquarters location | Stuttgart, Germany |
| Distribution | Worldwide |
| Publication types | Books, Newspapers, Academic journals, Magazines |
| Imprints | See below |
| Owner(s) |
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The Holtzbrinck Publishing Group (which is German: Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck in German) is a company from Germany. It is based in Stuttgart and is owned by a private family. This group owns many different publishing companies all over the world.
Through its company, Macmillan Publishers, Holtzbrinck is one of the five biggest English-language book publishers. In 2015, Holtzbrinck combined most of its science and education businesses with another company called Springer Science+Business Media. This created a new company named Springer Nature. Holtzbrinck owns more than half of this new company.
Contents
Our Story: How Holtzbrinck Started
The Holtzbrinck Publishing Group was started by Georg von Holtzbrinck. After a difficult time in German history, he began the company again in 1948. It started as a German book club.
In the 1960s, the company grew by buying other German publishers. These included well-known names like Droemer, Kindler, Rowohlt, and S. Fischer Verlag.
In 1985, Holtzbrinck bought the book part of a company called Holt, Rinehart and Winston. They renamed it the Henry Holt Book Company. A year later, they bought Scientific American magazine.
In the 1990s, Holtzbrinck continued to grow. In 1994, they bought most of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. A year later, they bought most of Macmillan Publishers. By 1999, they owned all of Macmillan. In 2001, Holtzbrinck also bought the Macmillan name in the United States.
E-books and Digital Rights
In 2006, Holtzbrinck made news when it asked Tor Books (which they own) to stop selling e-books without special copy protection. This protection is called Digital Rights Management (DRM). However, this policy changed later. By 2012, Tor books were available as DRM-free e-books. This means you could read them on different devices without special software.
The company also bought a popular German social media site called StudiVZ in 2007. This showed they were interested in more than just books.
Today, the chairman of the Holtzbrinck group is Stefan von Holtzbrinck. Don Weisberg is the CEO of Macmillan, which handles the group's businesses in the United States.
Companies and Brands
Holtzbrinck Publishing Group owns many different companies and brands around the world. These are called subsidiaries or imprints. A subsidiary is a company owned by another company. An imprint is a brand name used by a publisher, often for a specific type of book.
In Germany
- S. Fischer Verlag
- FISCHER Krüger
- Argon Verlag
- FISCHER Scherz
- Rowohlt Verlag
- Kiepenheuer & Witsch (Holtzbrinck owns 85% of this company)
- Verlagsgruppe Droemer Knaur (Holtzbrinck owns 50% of this company)
- O.W. Barth
- Die Zeit (Holtzbrinck owns 50% of this newspaper)
In the United States
Many of these companies use the Macmillan name:
- Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- Henry Holt and Company
- Holt Paperbacks
- Metropolitan Books
- Times Books
- Owl Books
- Palgrave Macmillan
- Picador
- Roaring Brook Press
- Neal Porter Books
- First Second Books
- St. Martin's Press
- Thomas Dunne Books
- Tom Doherty Associates
- Tor Books
- Forge Books
- Bedford, Freeman and Worth Publishing Group
- W.H. Freeman
- Bedford-St. Martin's
- Worth Publishers
- Macmillan Learning
- Hayden-McNeil
- Nature Publishing Group
Using the Audio Renaissance name in Southfield, Michigan:
- Renaissance Media
In the United Kingdom
- Macmillan Publishers
- Palgrave Macmillan
- Pan Macmillan
- Macmillan
- Pan Books
- Picador
- Macmillan Children's Books
- Campbell Books
- Priddy Books
- Boxtree
- Sidgwick & Jackson
- Macmillan Education
- Springer Nature (Holtzbrinck owns 53% of this company)
- Digital Science
More to Explore
- The Big Five English-language book publishers: Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Macmillan Publishers, and Hachette
- Springer Nature
- Books in Germany
- Bertelsmann
- Elsevier
- Lagardère Publishing
- McGraw Hill Education
- Pearson plc
- News Corp
- Scholastic Corporation
- Thomson Reuters
- Wiley (publisher)
