Workman Publishing Company

From the beginning Workman focused on publishing adult and children's non-fiction, and its titles and brands rank among the best-known in their fields, including: the What to Expect pregnancy and childcare guide; the educational series, Brain Quest and The Big Fat Notebooks; travel books like 1,000 Places to See Before You Die and Atlas Obscura; humor including The Complete Preppy Handbook and Bad Cat; award-winning cookbooks: The Noma Guide to Fermentation, The French Laundry Cookbook, Sheet Pan Suppers, The Silver Palate Cookbook, The Barbecue Bible; and novels including How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, Water for Elephants and the Young Adult Newberry Medalist, The Girl Who Drank the Moon. Workman also publishes calendars, including The Original Page-a-Day Calendars.^[3][4]


After over 50 years as an independent, family-owned company, Workman Publishing Company, Inc., joined The Hachette Book Group in 2021.^[5] Its primary offices are in New York City.

History[edit]

After a short stint packaging books for Ballantine, Peter Workman founded Workman Publishing with his wife, Carolan, in 1968. The first book published under the Workman imprint was Richard Hittelman's 28-Day Yoga Exercise Plan, which is still in print. In 1975 Workman published its first New York Times bestseller, B. Kliban's Cat, a collection of humorous illustrations that also inspired the company expand into calendar publishing with Cat as its first wall calendar. In 1979, Workman's creative director, Paul Hanson, created the Page-a-Day Calendar. In the years since, Page-a-Day Calendars have shipped over 100 million copies.^[6]


The following decades saw a succession of titles that had strong sales and strong cultural impact, beginning in with The Official Preppy Handbook (1980) and continuing with In and Out of the Garden (1981), The Silver Palate Cookbook (1982), What to Expect When You’re Expecting (1984), The Book of Questions (1987), All I Need to Know I Learned from My Cat (1990), Good Omens (1990, the first and only novel published under the Workman imprint), Brain Quest (1992), Boynton On Board board books (1993), Shoes (1996), Fandex (1998), The Cake Mix Doctor (1999), How to Grill (2001), 1,000 Places to See Before You Die and Stitch N Bitch (2003), Gallop! (2007), Indestructibles (2009), Safari and Steal Like an Artist (2012), and a trifecta in 2016, including the launch of two brands—The Big Fat Notebooks and Paint by Sticker—and Atlas Obscura.^[3]


Throughout its history, Workman has specialized in quirky but useful books, often with unusual formats. It published its first “book-plus” in 1983: How to Kazoo came with a real kazoo. Among its million-copy children's bestsellers are The Bug and Bug Bottle—the book came in a collecting bottle—and The Kids’ Book of Chess which came with a full chess set. The Brain Quest brand started with two decks of grommeted cards sold in a box. Indestructibles books are printed on a Tyvek-like paper that makes them rip-proof, chew-proof, washable and 100% non-toxic. The multi-million copy Scanimation and Photicular brands both have pages with moving images.^[7] In 2020, Workman and its imprints expanded into the jigsaw puzzle business.


For years Workman's unofficial motto was "no book before its time", which reflected Peter Workman's obsession with getting every part of a book right before sending it out into the world. It's part of the reason that one out of three Workman books have over 100,000 copies in print, and that approximately 80% of its business is "backlist"—sales generated by books that stay in print for years.^[8]


Peter Workman died in 2013. In 2015, Workman appointed Dan Reynolds, former President and Publisher of Storey Publishing, as its new President and CEO.^[9] In September, 2021, Carolan Workman sold the company to the Hachette Book Group.^[5]