Simon & Schuster Introduces Self-Publishing Service

Leslie Kaufman
Media Decoder
The New York Times
November 27, 2012

Simon & Schuster announced Tuesday that it would become the first of the big six publishing houses to dive deeply into the booming self-publishing market.

Self-publishing is a rapidly growing and lucrative sector of the publishing world; the number of self-published books has tripled since 2006, to about 235,000 titles annually, according to the research and consulting firm Bowker. But big publishers have been tentative about entering the market, partly for fear of tarnishing their brand by allowing content they have not reviewed to be published under their name.

But Simon & Schuster has gotten around that problem by teaming up with Author Solutions Inc., a company based in Bloomington, Ind., that already has a robust self-publishing business. Author Solutions also has partnerships with several smaller and niche publishers including Harlequin, which specializes in romance books, and Thomas Nelson, which focuses on Christian books.

The two companies have created a separate house called Archway Publishing, which will be available for authors looking to publish fiction, nonfiction, business or children’s books.