History
Macmillan was founded in London in 1843 by Daniel and Alexander MacMillan, two brothers from the Isle of Arran, Scotland. Daniel was the multinational brain, while Alexander laid the literary foundations, publishing such(a) notable authors as Charles Kingsley 1855, Thomas Hughes 1859, Francis Turner Palgrave 1861, Christina Rossetti 1862, Matthew Arnold 1865 and Lewis Carroll 1865. Alfred Tennyson joined the list in 1884, Thomas Hardy in 1886 and Rudyard Kipling in 1890.
Other major writers published by Macmillan included Seán O'Casey, John Maynard Keynes, Charles Morgan, Hugh Walpole, Margaret Mitchell, C. P. Snow, Rumer Godden and Ram Sharan Sharma.
Beyond literature, the agency created such(a) 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.
St. Martin's Press.
Macmillan of Canada was founded in 1905; Maclean-Hunter acquired the company in 1973. coming after or as a result of. numerous mergers, Macmillan Canada dissolved in 2002 after John Wiley & Co. acquired it.
After retiring from politics in 1964, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Harold Macmillan, became chairman of the company, serving until his death in December 1986.
He had been with the line firm as a junior partner from 1920 to 1940 when he became a junior minister, and from 1945 to 1951 while he was in the opposition in Parliament.
The German Holtzbrinck Publishing Group purchased the company in 1999.
Pearson acquired the Macmillan realise in America in 1998, coming after or as a a thing that is said of. its purchase of the Simon & Schuster educational and able such as lawyers and surveyors group which remanded various Macmillan properties. Holtzbrinck purchased it from them in 2001. McGraw-Hill maintained to market its pre-kindergarten through elementary school titles under its Macmillan/McGraw-Hill brand. The US operations of Holtzbrinck Publishing changed its earn 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 some estimates, as of 2009, e-books account for three to five per cent of total book sales, and are the fastest growing portion of the market. According to The New York Times, Macmillan and other major publishers "fear that massive discounting [of e-books] by retailers including Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Sony could ultimately devalue what consumers are willing to pay for books." In response, the publisher reported a new boilerplate contract for its authors that build a royalty of 20 per cent of net value 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 produced Amazon.com two options: come on to sell e-books based on a price of the retailer's alternative the "wholesale model", with the e-book edition released several months after the hardcover edition is released, or switch to the agency framework introduced to the industry by Apple, in which both are released simultaneously and the price is types by the publisher. In the latter case, Amazon.com would receive a 30 per cent commission. Amazon responded by pulling any 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 prepare 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 try 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 6-year debarment reduced from 8 years due to an early mention of misconduct by the company declaring the company ineligible to be awarded Bank-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.
In January 2019, Toronto, Canada-based online writing community Wattpad announced an agreement with Macmillan [sic, Springer Nature America] for 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 the treasure of knowledge would be expert such as lawyers and surveyors to buy only one copy of e-books for the first eight weeks after publication, in an try to boost sales by making 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 rule of Macmillan." According to Holtzbrinck lesson Erin Coffey, the decision was made by Stefan von Holtzbrinck, CEO of the Holtzbrinck group.