Gibbs Smith is an American
publisher
Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...
based in
Utah
Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...
. The publishing house was founded in 1969 by Gibbs M. Smith (1940–2017) and his wife Catherine.
Its offerings include
children's books
A child () is a human being between the stages of birth and puberty, or between the developmental period of infancy and puberty. The term may also refer to an unborn human being. In English-speaking countries, the legal definition of ''chi ...
, including the BabyLit line, cookbooks, home reference books, and the LoveLit gift line. It distributes the
Lil' Libros line of bilingual board books. The Gibbs Smith Education division produces social studies textbooks and digital materials for schools.
History
The company began its existence in a one-room sculptor's studio in
Santa Barbara, California
Santa Barbara (, meaning ) is a coastal city in Santa Barbara County, California, of which it is also the county seat. Situated on a south-facing section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coast of the United States excepting A ...
.
Smith used $12,000 earned from working on the film version of his
master's dissertation on labor activist
Joe Hill to finance his publishing venture, after receiving words of encouragement from publisher
Alfred A. Knopf, Sr. By 1973, the company had moved to a barn built in 1916 in
East Layton, Utah.
When operations first began in the barn, company personnel only had access to the top portion of the barn, while the bottom of the barn hosted cows and chickens.
The company was originally known as Peregrine Smith, before folding that name into one of its imprints and catalog lines.
The company first entered educational publishing in 1973 with its textbook ''Utah's Heritage'' and its educational publishing efforts provided financial stability during its early years.
By the late 1990s, 30 percent of its revenue came from publishing textbooks.
Company growth and expansion
By the early 1980s, the company had grown to eight employees.
As of the late 1990s, it was a considered a mid-sized publisher, received about 100 manuscript submissions each week, and brought about 60 new books to market each year.
The book topics included cowboy humor, western boots, architectural history, and cookbooks.
By the mid-2000s, the company offered such specialty cookbooks as ''101 Things To Do with Meatballs'' and a cookbook on ramen noodles.
The company was also involved in nature and wilderness books, and Smith served as president of the Utah chapter of the
Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is an American environmental organization with chapters in all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The club was founded in 1892, in San Francisco, by preservationist John Muir. A product of the Pro ...
in the late 1980s.
By the mid-1990s, the company had expanded into children's books.
The company also published on Utah-specific topics, like Utah folklore and
LDS
LDS may refer to:
Organizations
Religion
* Latter Day Saint movement (LDS movement), a collection of independent church groups
**The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the largest group within the Latter Day Saint movement
* Latvijas ...
history.
As major commercial publishing houses increasingly declined to publish manuscripts in the 1970s and 1980s that did not appear to guarantee commercial success, authors sought out publishing houses like Gibbs Smith.
Educational publishing
By the 2010s, the company's Gibbs Smith Education unit had developed state-specific social studies textbooks and digital materials based on
Common Core
The Common Core State Standards Initiative, also known as simply Common Core, was an American, multi-state educational initiative begun in 2010 with the goal of increasing consistency across state standards, or what K–12 students throughout th ...
standards and state-specific standards.
The company claimed that as of 2013, more than 30 states used the company's social studies materials.
Controversy
In early 2014, a parent in central Washington state drew media attention after criticizing a Gibbs Smith Washington state history textbook's summary of the
Second Amendment
The second (symbol: s) is a unit of time derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes, and finally to 60 seconds each (24 × 60 × 60 = 86400). The current and formal definition in the International System of Un ...
.
School district staff maintained that any harm from the characterization of the Second Amendment—as based on a right to use guns for hunting and other legal purposes—was minimal, as the information on the federal Constitution was supplementary to the textbook's core focus on state history and civics and because the text was necessarily diluted because of its mixed audience of seventh through ninth grade students.
References
[Kristen Moulton, Small Utah publishers finding success in national markets, Associated Press eseret News Dec. 16, 1997, p. D]
/ref>
[Jerry Johnston, Country press with city ideas, Deseret News, Nov. 21, 1981, p. S]
/ref>
[Elizabeth Mehren, An American Love Story: Letters From the Heart to the Statue of Liberty, Los Angeles Times, June 8, 198]
archived a
/ref>
[Utah firm to distribute nature book, Deseret News, May 31, 1989, p. B3]
[Kathleen Ganster, Book engages children and help Mt. Lebanon author find her niche, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Aug. 26, 1998, p. S-1]
/ref>
[Teresa Taylor, Flash in the Pan: Meatball to-do list, Charleston Post and Courier, Dec. 19, 2008, p. 8]
/ref>
[Kelly DeGarmo, Love of things western spurs entrepreneur's success, Charleston Post and Courier, Feb. 24, 1995, p. 2-]
/ref>
[Meet the Author - The Art of the Bookstore: Bookstore Paintings of Gibbs M. Smith by Gibbs Smith, Barnes & Noble]
[Gibbs Smith Education, Gibbs Smith Education Announces Featured Speaker at NCSS Annual Conference (press release), Nov. 11, 201]
archived a
/ref>
[Cameron Probert, Moses Lake parent questions book's change of Second Amendment, iFiber News, Jan. 2, 201]
archived a
/ref>
{{Authority control
Educational publishing companies of the United States
Companies based in Davis County, Utah
Publishing companies established in 1969
1969 establishments in California