Which are the most important american and english book publishers?

Question

Which are the most important american and english book publishers?

Answer 1

I'll assume that you're intending to ask which publishers are the largest publishers of books for the popular market (as opposed to educational, technical and other specialized markets) in the English language and that you don't mean important in another sense. Anyway, here's a list the majors (the majors are really only the first four but Hachette isprobably going to be one of the majors soon and is owned by the second largest publisher in the world, Livre Hachette of France):



Penguin Group (Penguin Books UK and Penguin Putnam, Inc. USA)

Random House

HarperCollins

Simon & Schuster

Hachette Book Group



There are many, many more publishers than this but they are either specialty publishers or independents. You may think there are many publishers missing from the list but if you look them up you will discover that they either no longer exist or they have been acquired by one of the publishers above and now function solely as an imprint of that publisher. Here's a longer list if you're interested.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_language_book_publishers



Cheers.

Answer 2

Important? Biggest?



Harper or Penguin who seem to have sucked up most of the market in the UK...



What you should do if you want to find a publisher is go to the library and find a book called the artists and writers year book, it lists all the publishing houses that accept submissions.



HOWEVER be prepared for mass rejection, or the perils of the slush pile, get thee an agent who will take a cut but will target your script more effectively.

Answer 3

Not one publisher is more 'important' than the other, so to speak. I think you mean more successful or even larger acceptance base.



But a simple google search should clear that up. Because, if you're serious about finding an agent and publishing, you wouldn't be here asking such a vague question.