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JOHN WILEY & SONS
Since Charles Wiley opened a printing shop in Manhattan in 1807, his heirs have been involved in the company -- a two-century legacy. Although the spines of Wiley books have carried the names of such literary notables as James Fenimore Cooper, Herman Melville and Edgar Allan Poe, the company today focuses on professional, consumer, scientific, technical, medical, higher-ed, and lifelong learning markets.
Drawn mostly from material supplied by the company
| In 1807, Charles Wiley, then 25 years old, opened a small printing shop at 6 Reade Street in New York City's lower Manhattan. During the next four years, he worked with other printers, primarily Isaac Riley, printing and publishing law books. In 1812, "C. Wiley, Printer" appeared for the first time on the title pages of several legal works. |
| Two years later, Charles Wiley formed a printing, publishing, and bookselling partnership with Cornelius Van Winkle, a noted printer, located at 3 Wall Street. This was also the site of the "Den," a meeting place for writers such as James Fenimore Cooper and William Cullen Bryant that foreshadowed the Greenwich Village coffee houses of the 1950s. Wiley and Van Winkle ended their partnership in 1820, when Charles chose to focus on publishing and bookselling and began hiring others to do his printing. He published James Fenimore Cooper's The Spy in 1821 and helped to launch this first American novelist's career. Wiley also published works by Richard Henry Dana, Washington Irving, and others. |
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When Charles Wiley died in 1826, his son John, then 18, took over the family business. Over the next 65 years, he continued as a bookseller and publisher, promoting American and European authors. In 1836, he hired George Putnam as a junior partner; together they achieved prominence publishing such works as Herman Melville's Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life, Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven, and Nathaniel Hawthorne's Mosses from an Old Manse. They published the works of European writers such as Hans Christian Andersen, Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Wiley and Putnam went their separate ways in 1848. John Wiley broadened the company's publishing programs to include works on art, religion, architecture, agriculture, science, and technology. In 1850, his eldest son, Charles, became involved in the business, which then became known as John Wiley & Son. The company adopted its current name in 1875, when his second son, William Halsted Wiley (also known as "the Major" for his involvement in the Civil War) came on board. John's youngest son, Osgood, also worked in the family business during the last two decades of the century. William O. Wiley, the eldest son of Charles and grandson of John, joined the firm in 1890. John Wiley continued to run the company until his death in 1891, at which time the Major took over.
In the 1860s, the company changed course to take advantage of the tremendous opportunities in science and technology publishing that were being created by the Industrial Revolution, thus laying the foundation for a major component of Wiley's worldwide business into the 21st century. Over the next several decades, Wiley continued to expand into new fields, including electrical, civil and mechanical engineering, architecture, construction, agriculture, and organic, physical, and analytical chemistry. By the early 1900s, Wiley was well established as a leading publisher in science and technology.
On January 16, 1904, the family business incorporated, with William H. Wiley as president, Charles Wiley as vice president, and William O. Wiley as secretary. During this time, Wiley established a greater presence internationally, entering into an agreement with Chapman & Hall, London, to act as its sole agent in Britain and Europe, as well as similar agreements in Canada, Shanghai, and Manila.
Edward P. Hamilton (the son of Alice Wiley Hamilton, who was the sister of Charles Wiley and William H. Wiley) joined the company in 1914 to assist William O. Wiley, who became its president in 1925 following the death of the Major. In 1932, William Bradford Wiley, the grandson of Osgood and great-grandson of John, became the fifth generation to work in the family business. He began his work as a "college traveler," securing textbook adoptions from college professors.
During the first few decades of the 20th century, Wiley branched out into social sciences and business management publishing, as these disciplines began to take on increasing importance for students and professionals. At the same time, the company increased its focus on postsecondary educational publishing.
In 1929, sales topped $1 million for the first time, and passed $2 million by 1941, the year in which William O. Wiley became chairman of the board and was succeeded as president by Edward P. Hamilton. The company grew dramatically as the post-World War II boom which sent millions of GIs back to college, increased the demand for Wiley's college and graduate-level textbooks and scientific and technical monographs. By the early 1950s, Wiley's revenues reached $6 million and the company employed more than 225 people.
In 1956, the year before the company celebrated its 150th anniversary, W. Bradford Wiley, then 46, succeeded his cousin as president and chief executive Officer. The following years were a time of significant expansion and change. Wiley acquired Interscience Publishers in 1961. One year later, shares in the company were offered to employees and the public for the first time, ending 155 years of private ownership. After five decades in the Wiley Building at 440 Fourth Avenue (now named Park Avenue South),
Wiley moved its worldwide headquarters to 605 Third Avenue. Distribution operations were expanded in Salt Lake City in 1962 (subsequently closed in 1988) and Somerset, New Jersey in 1967.
Those years also brought another surge in international growth. Subsidiaries were established in London in 1959 (moving to Chichester in 1968); Australia in 1963; India in 1965; and Toronto, Canada, in 1968. In subsequent years, Wiley expanded its global operations to Singapore, Japan and Germany, and set up sales offices on every continent.
Andrew H. Neilly Jr., who joined Wiley's sales and marketing department in 1947, was named president and chief operating officer in 1971 and chief executive officer in 1979, thus becoming the first nonfamily member appointed to this position. W. Bradford Wiley continued to provide strong leadership as chairman of the board, a role he kept until 1993. His interest in the business remained keen until his death in 1998. His daughter, Deborah E. Wiley, became the sixth generation of the family in the business when she joined its staff in 1968. She currently serves as senior vice president for corporate communications. Her brothers, Bradford Wiley II and Peter Booth Wiley, also become active in the company's operations and governance. A member of the board of director sinsce 1979, Brad Wiley II succeeded his father as chairman of the board in 1993; he was also an editor in the College Division from 1989 to 1998. Peter Wiley joined the company's board of directors in 1984 and continues to serve as a member of that body.
In 1980, sales reached $100 million. As Wiley celebrated its 175th year of publishing in 1982, it expanded beyond its traditional businesses into the area of business education and training with the acquisition of Wilson Learning Coporation. In 1984, Wiley acquired Scripta-Technica, a scientific journals publisher and translator.
Ruth McMullin joined Wiley in 1987 as chief operating officer and succeeded Andrew Neilly as president and chief executive officer in 1988. The company's growth had slowed, especially in the College Division, and there was a recognition that Wiley had to make changes to continue to prosper.
In 1990, Charles R. Ellis succeeded Ruth McMullin as president and chief executive officer. He had joined Wiley in 1988 as senior vice president, for Professional and Trade Publishing and had subsequently been appointed executive vice president and president of Wiley Publishing Group.
Under Charles's leadership, the company sharpened its focus to improve profitabiliy and gain market share. A strategic program was developed and implemented to strengthen core businesses through acquisitions, alliances, and organic growth; divest programs that were not contributing to the company's success; grow globally; and invest in technology to evolve the business.
In June 1996, Wiley took a major step forward when it acquired a 90 percent interest in VCH for approximately $99 million. VCH is an important scientific, technical, and professional publisher based in Germany, with a longstanding publishing partnership with the German Chemical Society. The acquisition of the VCH Group, which now includes Ernst & Sohn and Verlag Helvetia Chimica Acta, further strengthened Wiley's leadership in these markets.
In 1997, Wiley acquired Van Nostrand Reinhold (VNR), an eminent publishing imprint of books and electronic products for professionals in architecture/design, environmenal/industrial science, culinary arts/hospitality,
and business technology, for approximately $28 million. Smaller, strategic acquisitions also contributed to the company's growth, including the Preservation Press, the Clinical Psychology Publishing Company, the publishing programs of Chronimed, Inc., Huthig Publishing Group, and the German Materials Science Society, to name just a few. Publishing partnerships and alliances offered still another avenue of growth. Wiley became the publisher of Cancer, the flagship journal of the American Cancer Society.
In 1998, William J. Pesce was named president and chief executive officer, becoming the tenth leader of the company since its inception in 1807. A member of the company's senior management team since 1989, Mr. Pesce led the turnaround of the College Division and contributed significantly to the growth and profitability of the company's global publishing programs. He had served as Wiley's chief operating officer since 1997.
Wiley first established www.wiley.com in May 1995. The company's Web site has evolved considerably since then, with new products, capabilities, and services such as Wiley InterScience, www.interscience.wiley.com, an online service providing access to more than 300 journals and major reference works was launched commercially in January 1999.
In 1998, Wiley was selected as one of the "most respected companies" in a global survey of chief executive O=officers conducted by the highly regarded financial newspaper, Financial Times. Citing Wiley's strategy as "strong and well thought out," the chief executives chose Wiley as one of the top 40 companies and the only publisher named in a list that included such global brand names as General Electric, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Intel, and Proctor & Gamble.
In 1999, three important acquisitions strengthened the company's core businesses, which specialize in publishing print and electronic products for the professional, consumer, scientific, technical, medical, higher education, and lifelong learning markets. Wiley acquired Pearson Education's college textbooks and instructional packages in biology/anatomy and physiology; engineering; mathematics; economics/finance; and teacher education for approximately $58 million. Wiley also acquired the San Francisco-based Jossey-Bass, a publisher of books and journals for professionals and executives in business, psychology, education, and health management for approximately $81 million. The company also acquired the J.K. Lasser tax and financial guides to enhance its already strong presence in the financial planning market.
In 2001, Wiley acquired Hungry Minds Inc., the largest acquisition in the company's history. Through it, a portfolio of high profile brands came under the Wiley umbrella, including the For Dummies series, the Webster's New World dictionaries and CliffsNotes study guides, the Frommer's travel guides, and the Betty Crocker and Weight Watchers cookbooks. Through the 1990s, Hungry Minds had established itself as one of the world's major computer publishers, with the For Dummies series augmented by the higher-end Bible, Visual, and Secrets lines for programmers. The acquisition increased Wiley's Professional/Trade revenues from roughly one third of the total to well over half.
In recent years, the company has focused its efforts on delivering Wiley's deep reservoir of 'must-have' content to global communities of interest. The company has formed many collaborative relationships in order to further this objective; partners include Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Culinary Institute of America, the American Institute of Architects, the Institute for Scientific Information, netLibrary, Caliber, Lightning Source, Fast Company, Versaware, WebCT, Blackboard, Science News, and the American Museum of Natural History, among others. Wiley's leadership helped to forge an unprecendented alliance among more than 60 major publishers worldwide to form CrossRef, an online journal reference linking service that is revolutionizing the research process.
The 1990s was a period of dramatic change for the company. In financial terms, revenues increased from less then $300 million in 1990 to nearly $600 million in 2000. During the same period, the company's market capitalization increased from about $100 million to more than $1 billion.
During the summer of 2000, Wiley signed a 15-year lease to relocate its global headquarters to a new building on the waterfront in Hoboken, New Jersey. The move occurred as scheduled in July 2002. |
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