Crown

About Crown

Crown is a New York publishing imprint that grew out of the Outlet Book Company, a remainder wholesaler set up in 1933 by Nat Wartels and Bob Simon, and it is now part of the Random House Publishing Group at Penguin Random House.

The founders began issuing original books under the Crown name in 1936 and expanded in the 1940s by buying bankrupt publishers including Covici-Friede and Robert M. McBride. Clarkson Potter became affiliated with Crown in 1963. Crown's commercial successes included Alex Comfort's The Joy of Sex, Jean M. Auel's The Clan of the Cave Bear and Judith Krantz's Princess Daisy.

Random House bought Crown in 1988 and ran it as a separate division, the Crown Publishing Group, until 2018, when it was merged with Random House's adult publishing. In 2008, when Doubleday merged with Knopf, Crown took over Doubleday Business/Currency, Doubleday Religion and WaterBrook Multnomah. More recent Crown books include Ernest Cline's Ready Player One (16 August 2011) and Michelle Obama's Becoming (13 November 2018), which sold about 725,000 copies in North America on its first day.

How to spot a Crown first edition

• Before the 1970s Crown carried no first-edition statement but numbered or noted later printings on the copyright page, so a pre-1970s Crown book with no printing note is normally a first printing.