Crown

Crown Publishing Group began in 1933 when Nat Wartels and Bob Simon bought the struggling Outlet Book Company, a remainders and overstock operation. They quickly moved beyond reselling old stock into reprinting bestselling titles at lower prices, and in 1936 began publishing original content under the Crown name. Wartels, a salesman and avid gambler, had a talent for reading the market; early high-profile acquisitions included Judith Krantz's Princess Daisy, Jean M. Auel's The Clan of the Cave Bear, and Alex Comfort's The Joy of Sex. The company grew through acquisitions in the 1940s and 1960s, adding Covici-Friede, Howell Soskin, Arcadia House, and Clarkson Potter in 1963. Random House purchased Crown in 1988.

Today Crown Publishing Group operates as a division of Penguin Random House. A 2018 reorganization merged it with the main Random House Publishing Group, and its imprints are now organized into three clusters. The trade list includes Crown, Crown Archetype, Broadway Books, Hogarth, Three Rivers Press, and Tim Duggan Books. An illustrated and prescriptive nonfiction cluster holds Clarkson Potter, Harmony Books, Rodale Books, and Ten Speed Press. A third cluster covers business, politics, and religion titles through Currency, Crown Forum, Convergent, Image, Multnomah, and WaterBrook. Newer imprints such as 4 Color Books, Ten Speed Graphic, and Storehouse Voices have been added in recent years.

The flagship Crown list is home to narrative nonfiction, history, memoir, current affairs, and popular culture. Its roster includes Matthew Desmond, whose Evicted won the Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction; Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl; Elizabeth Kolbert, whose Under a White Sky examines the environmental and cultural costs of skyscrapers; and political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt with How Democracies Die. Across its imprints, Crown's authors and books have earned Pulitzer Prizes, James Beard Awards, Eisner Awards, and National Book Critics Circle Awards.

A reader picking up a Crown title can expect story-driven reporting, well-argued books on current events, and practical works in cooking and design that go beyond the purely instructional. The group's breadth lets a single author move across imprints and formats, and the editorial emphasis is on books that expand what readers know about the world rather than merely entertaining them.