Crown Publishing Group

The Crown Publishing Group is a subsidiary of Penguin Random House that publishes across several categories including fiction, non-fiction, biography, autobiography and memoir, cooking, health, business, and lifestyle. Its imprints include Crown, Crown Archetype, Crown Business, Crown Forum, Hogarth, Three Rivers Press, Clarkson Potter, Potter Craft, Potter Style, Broadway Books, Broadway Paperbacks, Image (formerly Doubleday Religion), WaterBrook/Multnomah, Harmony Books, Rodale Books, Watson-Guptill, Amphoto Books, and Ten Speed Press. Formerly, the company also used the Bell Tower Press, Orion Books (unconnected to Orion Publishing in the United Kingdom), and related imprints and subsidiaries, such as Gramercy Publishing Company. However, these have now either been discontinued or transferred to other Random House units.
Crown authors include Jean Auel, Max Brooks, George W. Bush, Deepak Chopra, Ann Coulter, Andrew Cuomo, Giada De Laurentiis, Will Ferrell (as fictional character Ron Burgundy), Gillian Flynn, Jim Gaffigan, Ina Garten, Mindy Kaling, Rachel Maddow, Jillian Michaels, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Theresa Rebeck, Mark Brennan Rosenberg, Judith Rossner, Rebecca Skloot, Suzanne Somers, Martha Stewart, and many others.
History.
Outlet Book Company.
The company was founded in 1933 as the Outlet Book Company by Nat Wartels and Bob Simon. Outlet Book Company began by featuring overstock and remaindered books, but soon moved into reprints of backlist, out-of-print, largely non-fiction titles, then into reprints of best-selling fiction and non-fiction, and eventually into original titles. It was under the Crown name that they began to publish original content in 1936.
Crown acquired bankrupt publishers such as Covici-Friede, Henkle-Yewdale, and Robert M. McBride in the 1940s. Other publishers acquired by Crown include Arcadia House; Howell, Soskin; and Julian Press.
Under the direction of Wartels, Alan Mirken, Joseph Reiner and others, Crown Books became one of the Outlet Book Company's lead imprints for original publishing which included such landmark fiction and non-fiction as Judith Krantz's "Princess Daisy," Jean M. Auel's "The Clan of the Cave Bear" and Alex Comfort's "The Joy of Sex" in its early high-profile years.
Crown Publishing Group had its headquarters at 225 Park Avenue South in Midtown Manhattan, occupying of space. Random House received the space when it acquired the company. In 1990 Random House signaled intentions to sublease the space.
Random House.
The Outlet Book Company's Crown Books remained an independent company until 1988 when it was purchased by Random House.
In 2008, the Doubleday Business/Currency, Doubleday Religion, and WaterBrook Multnomah divisions were moved from Doubleday to Crown when Doubleday was merged with Knopf. Doubleday Religion was replaced with the Catholic imprint Image in 2011.
In 2018, Crown was combined with Random House.