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Macmillan Publishers (occasionally known as the Macmillan Group; formally Macmillan Publishers Ltd in the United Kingdom and Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC in the United States) is a British publishing company traditionally considered to be one of the "Big Five" English language publishers (along with Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster). Founded in London in 1843 by Scottish brothers Daniel and Alexander MacMillan, the firm soon established itself as a leading publisher in Britain. It published two of the best-known works of Victorian-era children's literature, Lewis Carroll's '' Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and Rudyard Kipling's '' The Jungle Book'' (1894).

Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Harold Macmillan, grandson of co-founder Daniel, was chairman of the company from 1964 until his death in December 1986. Since 1999, Macmillan has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Holtzbrinck Publishing Group with offices in 41 countries worldwide and operations in more than thirty others.

History

Macmillan was founded in London in 1843 by Daniel and Alexander MacMillan, two brothers from the Isle of Arran, Scotland. Daniel was the business brain, while Alexander laid the literary foundations, publishing such notable authors as Charles Kingsley (1855), Thomas Hughes (1859), Francis Turner Palgrave (1861), Christina Rossetti (1862), Matthew Arnold (1865) and Lewis Carroll (1865), with the latter first meeting Alexander in London on 19 October 1863. Alfred, Lord Tennyson joined the list in 1884, Thomas Hardy in 1886 and Rudyard Kipling in 1890.

Other major writers published by Macmillan included W. B. Yeats, Rabindranath Tagore, Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Seán O'Casey, John Maynard Keynes, Charles Morgan, Hugh Walpole, Margaret Mitchell, C. P. Snow, Rumer Godden and Ram Sharan Sharma.

Beyond literature, the company created such enduring titles as ''Nature'' (1869), the '' Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' (1877) and Sir Robert Harry Inglis Palgrave's ''Dictionary of Political Economy'' (1894–99).

George Edward Brett opened the first Macmillan office in the United States in 1869 and Macmillan sold its U.S. operations to the Brett family, George Platt Brett Sr. and George Platt Brett Jr., in 1896, resulting in the creation of an American company, Macmillan Publishing, also called The Macmillan Company (later known as Macmillan Inc. or Macmillan US). Even with the split of the American company from its parent company in England, George Brett Jr. and Harold Macmillan remained close personal friends. Macmillan Publishers held stake in the American company before divesting it in 1951, and later re-entered the American market in 1952 under the name St. Martin's Press.

Macmillan of Canada was founded in 1905; Maclean-Hunter acquired the company in 1973. Following numerous mergers, Macmillan Canada dissolved in 2002 after John Wiley & Co. acquired it.

Harold Macmillan, grandson of company co-founder Daniel, became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (10 January 1957 – 18 October 1963). Earlier, he had been with the family firm as a junior partner from 1920 to 1940 (when he became a junior minister, as Under-secretary of State for the Colonies), and working with Macmillan Publishers again from 1945 to 1951 while he was also in the opposition in Parliament. After retiring from politics in 1964, he became chairman of the company until 1974, when he handed on the chairmanship to his son Maurice Macmillan. The latter, having been Paymaster General in the defeated government of Edward Heath, also left the government, but within the company took on the more honorary position of president until his death in December 1986.

21st century

Pearson acquired the Macmillan name in America in 1998, following its purchase of the Simon & Schuster educational and professional group (which included various Macmillan Inc. properties and trademarks). Holtzbrinck purchased it from them in 2001. McGraw-Hill continues to market its pre-kindergarten through elementary school titles under its Macmillan/McGraw-Hill brand. The US operations of Holtzbrinck Publishing changed its name to Macmillan in October 2007. Its audio publishing imprint changed its name from Audio Renaissance to Macmillan Audio, while its distribution arm was renamed from Von Holtzbrinck Publishers Services to Macmillan Publishers Services. Pan Macmillan purchased Kingfisher, a British children's publisher, from Houghton Mifflin in October 2007. Roaring Brook Press publisher Simon Boughton would oversee Kingfisher's US business.

By 2009, some estimates put e-books at 3 – 5 percent of total book sales, and are the fastest growing segment of the market. According to ''The New York Times'', Macmillan and other major publishers "fear that massive discounting f e-booksby retailers including Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Sony could ultimately devalue what consumers are willing to pay for books." In response, the publisher introduced a new boilerplate contract for its authors that established a royalty of 20 per cent of net proceeds on e-book sales, a rate five per cent lower than most other major publishers. Following the announcement of the Apple iPad on 27 January 2010—a product that comes with access to the iBookstore—Macmillan gave Amazon.com two options: continue to sell e-books based on a price of the retailer's choice (the " wholesale model"), with the e-book edition released several months after the hardcover edition is released, or switch to the agency model introduced to the industry by Apple, in which both are released simultaneously and the price is set by the publisher. In the latter case, Amazon.com would receive a 30 per cent commission. Amazon responded by pulling all Macmillan books, both electronic and physical, from their website (although affiliates selling the books were still listed). On 31 January 2010, Amazon chose the agency model preferred by Macmillan. In April 2012, the United States Department of Justice filed '' United States v. Apple Inc.'', naming Apple, Macmillan, and four other major publishers as defendants. The suit alleged that they conspired to fix prices for e-books, and weaken Amazon.com's position in the market, in violation of antitrust law. In December 2013, a federal judge approved a settlement of the antitrust claims, in which Macmillan and the other publishers paid into a fund that provided credits to customers who had overpaid for books due to the price-fixing.

In 2010, Macmillan Education submitted to an investigation on grounds of fraudulent practices. The Macmillan division admitted to bribery in an attempt to secure a contract for an education project in southern Sudan. As a direct result of the investigation, sanctions were applied by the World Bank Group, namely a six-year debarment (reduced from eight years due to an early acknowledgment of misconduct by the company) declaring the company ineligible to be awarded WBG-financed contracts.

In December 2011, Bedford, Freeman, and Worth Publishing Group, Macmillan's higher education group, changed its name to Macmillan Higher Education while retaining the Bedford, Freeman, and Worth name for its k–12 educational unit. Also, that month, Brian Napack resigned as Macmillan president while staying on for transitional purposes.

In 2012, parent company Holtzbrinck reorganized; Macmillan's consumer publishing operations were now led by John Turner Sargent from New York City.

In May 2015, London-based Macmillan Science and Education merged with Berlin-based Springer Science+Business Media to form Springer Nature, jointly controlled by Holtzbrinck Publishing Group and BC Partners. The following month, it dissolved its British-based imprint Boxtree Limited, which Macmillan had operated since 1986.

In January 2019, Toronto, Canada-based online writing community Wattpad announced an agreement with Macmillan ic, Springer Nature Americafor handling sales and distribution in the U.S. for its new publishing division Wattpad Books, alongside rival Penguin Random House that will handle the U.K. and India market, and Raincoast Books for the Canadian market.

In November 2019, Macmillan announced that libraries would be able to buy only one copy of e-books for the first eight weeks after publication, in an effort to boost sales by creating long waits for borrowers at large library systems. This prompted complaints and some libraries boycotted the company; the policy was reversed in March 2020.

In September 2020, Macmillan announced that CEO John Sargent will be leaving at the end of the year due to "a disagreement regarding the direction of Macmillan." According to Holtzbrinck spokesperson Erin Coffey, the decision was made by Stefan von Holtzbrinck, CEO of the Holtzbrinck group.

Divisions

American publishing divisions with imprints

Other American divisions

*Macmillan Publishers Services, formerly Von Holtzbrinck Publishers Services, distribution unit for independent publishers:
** Bloomsbury USA
** The College Board
** Drawn & Quarterly
** Entangled Publishing
** Graywolf Press
** Guinness World Records
**Macmillan UK
**Page Street

Pan Macmillan British imprints

See also

* List of largest book publishers of the United Kingdom

References

Further reading

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External links

The Macmillan Archive
at the British Library

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The Macmillan Story: Bringing authors and readers together since 1843
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{{Authority control

Book publishing companies of the United Kingdom
Publishing companies based in London
Holtzbrinck Publishing Group
1843 establishments in England
1843 establishments in Scotland
Publishing companies established in 1843
1999 mergers and acquisitions
British companies established in 1843