The Brave New World of Book Publishing

In front of me sit five books from my bookshelf: Blindness by José Saramago, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe, Crazy Horse and Custer by Stephen Ambrose, and All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. The books were published by Mariner, Vintage, Picador, Anchor Books, and Ballantine Books, respectively. Although the names of these publishers may not be immediately recognizable, a closer look reveals that they are all imprints of three major publishing houses: Penguin Random House (Vintage, Anchor, Ballantine), MacMillan (Picador), and HarperCollins (Mariner).