Simon & Schuster

About Simon & Schuster

Simon & Schuster is an American trade publisher founded in New York City on 2 January 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster, and one of the "Big Five" English-language publishers.

The partners started with a crossword puzzle book. In 1939 they backed Robert de Graff in launching Pocket Books, which introduced mass-market pocket paperbacks to the United States. Marshall Field III bought the firm in 1944, and after his death in 1957 it was sold back for one million dollars. Gulf+Western acquired it in 1975, after which it passed through Paramount Communications, Viacom, CBS Corporation and Paramount Global. Kohlberg Kravis Roberts bought it for 1.62 billion dollars in a deal that closed in October 2023, and in March 2026 it named Greg Greeley as chief executive.

Simon & Schuster first published Joseph Heller's Catch-22 on 10 October 1961, at 5.95 dollars in hardback, and Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove in 1985, which won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Its imprints include Scribner, Atria, Gallery, Pocket Books and Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, and it is based at 1230 Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan.

How to spot a Simon & Schuster first edition

• Up to the early 1950s Simon & Schuster put no first-edition statement in its books: a first printing has a clean copyright page, while later printings are noted there.
• Where a printing line appears on the copyright page, the lowest number shows the printing, whatever order the numbers run in; a line with a 1 normally indicates a first printing.
• Book club editions are a common trap: their jackets usually carry no price on the front flap, so a priced jacket is one of the first things to check.