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Who owns who in the book publishing world: can't tell the players without a program!

Posted At : October 22, 2007 4:12 PM | Posted By : Charlie Arehart
Related Categories: user groups
Ever wondered who owns who in the book publishing world? It becomes important for those who run user groups, as most publishers have great programs to provide free review and giveaway copies of books for our groups. But how do you know whose program to go to to get a particular book? It's not as simple as it seems, since many imprints are actually subsidiaries of a larger publisher.

It's like they say in baseball: "you can't tell the players without a program!" :-)

So with that, I'd like to present my observation of who's who, using primarily the list of publishers listed in the Adobe UG program. It generally just lists the parent publishers, so this will help you know who to go to for particular books. (Authorized UG managers can see the list in the "third party program resources" page.)

Who's owned by who?

Again, as mine is a blog focused on ColdFusion, this list is also focused only on the publishers (and their imprints) that would be of interest to CFers. The publishers below sometimes have (many) more subsidiary imprints than those I list. Beyond that, though, these lists may still be incomplete for publishers we may be interested in, and I welcome feedback and corrections.

I've tried to get the information from the actual publishers sites themselves, and have offered a link where available. Another useful resource for this is a blog entry by Tim O'Reilly on the state of the computer book publishing industry. It had a little more detail in some areas, yet also didn't list all the publishers mentioned below.

  • Apress: Friends of Ed

  • Manning: none

  • McGraw Hill: Osborne and many others, but none in this space it seemed (from http://pubeasy.mcgraw-hill.com/pls/pubeasy/bepublist.publist_page)

  • O'Reilly: Pogue Press (O'Reilly source-- as it states, others listed there are distribution partners, not subsidiaries)

  • Packt: none

  • Pearson: Addison-Wesley , Adobe Press, Exam Cram, IBM Press, Macromedia Press, MySQL Press, New Riders, Novell Press, Peachpit Press, Prentice Hall, Que, Sams, Sun Microsystems Press (Pearson source), additional info from O'Reilly blog)

  • Wiley: Dummies, John Wiley, Sybex, Teach Yourself Visually, Wrox (Wiley source)

Hope that helps someone. And while it's accurate today (as far as I know), it could certainly become dated over time as transition in the industry continues, if you find this entry some months or years from now!

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<y CF books, they were published by Osborne, which was the tech book publishing arm of McGraw-Hill. From your link about them, Osborne is still listed:

"McGraw-Hill Osborne Media-Computing"

and a direct link to their home page: "http://www.mhprofess...

Officially I still get about a dozen returns a quarter from each book. ( Even though there hasn't been a sale in years ). :ha, ha:
# Posted By Jeffry Houser | 10/22/07 10:42 PM
Thanks, Jeff. Actually, I had been misled about McGraw-Hill by this page: http://pubeasy.mcgra... As I eyeballed the few dozen imprints, most that started with McGraw-Hill seemed not ones I'd heard of before, so I assumed they were very niche.

Now that you point out that Osborne is a subsidiary, I see now that the list included it (as McGraw-Hill Osborne Media-Computing and McGraw-Hill Osborne Media-Osborne). As I look at the rest of the list, I don't see others. I'll add Osborne and the URL above to the listing above. Thanks.
# Posted By Charlie Arehart | 10/22/07 11:18 PM
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