History
Established by Georg von Holtzbrinck in 1948, the group first began as a German book club. In the 1960s, it purchased Droemer, Kindler, Rowohlt and S. Fischer Verlag, two German publishing companies. In 1985, it acquired the retail book division of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, naming it the Henry Holt Book Company. One year later, the company acquired Scientific American magazine for $52.6 million. In 1994, it purchased a majority interest in Farrar, Straus & Giroux from retiring Roger W. Straus, Jr. A year later, it purchased a 70% majority interest in The Macmillan Group, and then the remaining shares in 1999.
In March 2006, Holtzbrinck forced Tor Books, which is owned by Holtzbrinck, to stop making its books available as eBooks via Baen Ebooks because of concerns regarding the lack of digital rights management (DRM). These concerns abated in 2007 and selected Tor titles will soon be available as e-books via Baen and a variety of other online retailers. The company also received a good deal of attention when it bought the leading German social networking platform StudiVZ in January 2007.
Holtzbrinck has total annual sales of 2.1 billion euros (as of 2005); 49% of sales are in Germany and 23% in North America. It had 2005 earnings before taxes of 142 million euros, and a total of 14,000 employees.
Chairman of the group is Stefan von Holtzbrinck. John Sargent is CEO of Macmillan, the company that unites the US-based businesses of the group.
Read more about this topic: Georg Von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group
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