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John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
In 1807, Charles Wiley, then 25 years old, opened a small printing shop at 6 Reade Street in lower Manhattan, New York City. 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. At this site Wiley also hosted 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 many other writers.
When Charles Wiley died in 1826, his son John, then age 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 Wiley's worldwide reputation in these markets today. 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 Great 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 one million dollars for the first time, and passed the two million mark 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 first member of the sixth generation of the family in the business when she joined its staff in 1968. She currently serves as Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications. Her brothers, Bradford Wiley II and Peter Booth Wiley, also become active in the company's operations and governance. A Director since 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 in September 2002 was installed as Chairman, succeeding Brad, who continues to serve as a Board member.
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 Corporation. In 1984, Wiley acquired Scripta-Technica, a scientific journals publisher and translator. The Business, Law, and General Books division (soon renamed the Professional/Trade publishing division, as it is known today) was founded in 1985.
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, Professional Group (which included journals, STM publishing, and the recently renamed Professional/Trade publishing division) 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 profitability and gain market share. A strategic program was developed and implemented to strengthen its 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.
Wiley significantly expanded its scientific, technical, and medical publishing program with the 1989 acquisition of Alan R. Liss, Inc., a leading publisher of journals and books in the life sciences. In 1996, Wiley acquired a 90% interest in VCH, an important scientific, technical, and professional publisher based in Germany, for approximately $99 million. VCH has a longstanding publishing partnership with the German Chemical Society, and 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, environmental/industrial science, culinary arts/hospitality, and business technology, for approximately $28 million. Various smaller acquisitions also added to growth throughout the mid- and late 1990s, and publishing partnerships and alliances offered still another avenue for expansion; through Wiley's alliance with the American Cancer Society, the company became the publisher of Cancer, the Society's flagship journal.
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 established www.wiley.com as its corporate Web site in May 1995. The site has evolved considerably since then, and now offers the full range of Wiley's products, brands, and services. Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) launched commercially in January 1999 as the company's online platform for scientific, technical, medical, and professional content. Today Wiley InterScience provides access to more than 3 million articles across 1,400 journals, including 1.6 million journal articles gained through the 2007 acquisition of Blackwell Publishing (described below) that were formerly hosted on the Blackwell Synergy platform. It also includes over 6,000 titles from OnlineBooks™, major reference works, and industry-leading databases and laboratory manuals. In 2007, Wiley's bicentennial year, the company completed an initiative to digitize its entire historical journal holdings, making 8.2 million pages of content dating back to 1799 available on Wiley InterScience. It is one of the largest such archives in the world.
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., for approximately $184.9 million. 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. Branded Wiley Web sites such as www.dummies.com, www.frommers.com, and www.cliffsnotes.com are increasingly generating significant revenue from licensing, advertising, partnerships, and product sales.
During the summer of 2002, Wiley relocated its global headquarters from New York City to a new building on the waterfront in Hoboken, New Jersey.
In 2007 Wiley completed the acquisition of the outstanding shares of the U.K.-based Blackwell Publishing (Holdings) Ltd., one of the world's foremost academic and professional publishers, for $1.1 billion (£572 million), making it the largest acquisition in the company's history. Blackwell's publishing program has been merged with Wiley's global scientific, technical, and medical business to form what is now called Scientific, Technical, Medical, and Scholarly, also known as Wiley-Blackwell, the largest of Wiley's three core businesses. The combined business publishes approximately 1,400 scholarly peer-reviewed journals as well as an extensive collection of books with global appeal. According to the Thomson ISI® 2006 ISI Journal Citation Reports, Wiley and Blackwell combined publish more journals in the Social Science Citation Index than any other publisher. Since June 2008, online Blackwell journals formerly hosted on Blackwell Synergy have been available through Wiley InterScience, and a next-generation online publishing platform will launch in early 2009 for Wiley-Blackwell electronic content and resources.
The company has continued to make small but strategic acquisitions. Some recent acquisitions include Anker Publishing Company, Inc., a publisher of books and periodicals for professionals in higher education; Whatsonwhen Ltd., a U.K.-based provider of travel-related online content, technology and related services; Health Economics Evaluation Database (HEED), a U.K.-based online provider of health economics information and evaluation; Carpe Diem publications; Whurr Publishers Limited, a London-based publisher of books and journals in the health sciences and special education; Fernhurst Books (now Wiley Nautical), a U.K.-based publisher of books, manuals, and guides on nautical sports; InfoPOEMs, Inc., a provider of evidence-based medicine content delivered via desktop computers and personal digital assistants; Sybex, Inc., a global publisher of books and software for the information technology professional; the reference portfolio of the Nature Publishing Group; the book list of Professional Engineering Publishing; and the publishing arm of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers.
In recent years, the company has focused its efforts on delivering Wiley's deep reservoir of 'must-have' content to global communities of interest, forming many collaborative relationships in order to further this objective. Partners include Lincoln Center, Microsoft, Yahoo, CFA Institute, Morningstar, Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Culinary Institute of America, General Mills, the American Institute of Architects, the American Society of Interior Designers, the Institute for Scientific Information, netLibrary, Acadient, Caliber, Lightning Source, Fast Company, Versaware, Blackboard, Science News, the National Geographic Society, the American Museum of Natural History, and Rand McNally & Company. The company has formed strategic alliances with dozens of prestigious societies; in addition to the American Cancer Society, Wiley's society partners include the Society of Chemical Industry, the Orthopaedic Research Society, and the Society of Hospital Medicine. Wiley has gained many other society partners through the acquisition of Blackwell, which publishes well over 550 journals on behalf of societies. Wiley also partners with The Cochrane Collaboration to publish the Cochrane Library of evidence-based medicine databases.
Wiley is committed to providing customers with the information they want, when and how they want it. With WileyPLUS™ (www.wileyplus.com), we are offering digital Higher Education texts that are integrated with resources for online study and administration of homework, tests, and other course elements, in a way proven to engage students while helping them master topics and achieve better grades. WileyPLUS and Wiley InterScience are both transforming Wiley's relationships with customers; they allow us to see how users interact with our content, providing valuable feedback that guides us in developing better products and solutions for them. Higher Education responds to evolving markets; the Wiley Pathways series, introduced in 2006, targets the growing group of students, often working and with families, who are pursuing their post-secondary education with a strong career focus.
By partnering with respected companies and organizations, Wiley extends its expertise and offers new approaches to teaching and learning. At the beginning of the 2007 fiscal year, Wiley became Microsoft's sole publishing partner worldwide for all Microsoft Official Academic Course (MOAC) materials, used in college courses that train and certify students in Microsoft technologies. Wiley is collaborating with Microsoft on a new co-branded series of textbook and e-learning products, and also sells existing MOAC titles. Wiley extended its global alliance with the National Geographic Society (NGS) to create the Wiley Visualizing series. These introductory higher education texts incorporate the NGS's superb images, maps, and videos, and use a unique visual approach to maximize learning.
Wiley's leadership helped to forge an unprecedented alliance among more than 1,400 major publishers worldwide to form CrossRef, an online journal reference linking service that is revolutionizing the research process. Wiley and Blackwell have both also participated in such initiatives as Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI), sponsored by the World Health Organization; Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA), sponsored by the Food and Agriculture Organization; and Online Access to Research in the Environment (OARE), sponsored by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), three projects that bring open or low-cost access to leading STM journals to end-users in developing nations. The company has also worked closely with key health organizations and other publishers to develop patientINFORM (www.patientinform.org,), a free online service disseminating original medical research directly to patients and their caregivers.
In February 2007, Wiley joined with the New York Public Library's Science, Industry and Business Library (SIBL) to provide Library users broad, public online access to over 300 peer-reviewed journals that until now have been available principally through academic or corporate collections. For the first time at each of the Library's four research libraries -SIBL, Humanities and Social Science Library, Library for the Performing Arts, and the Schomburg Center for research in Black Culture - users have the ability to electronically access the full-text of journal articles online via Wiley InterScience.
Wiley has seen vigorous growth and dramatic change since the early 1990s. In financial terms, revenues increased from less than $300 million in FY1990 to over $1 billion in FY2007. During the same period, the company's market capitalization increased from about $100 million to over $2 billion. Over the past decade, Wiley's revenue has increased by 11% per year (CAGR) and its earnings per share has risen by 18% per year (CAGR).
With Asia emerging as both a dynamic market and a vital source of Wiley content, the company has substantially increased its publishing as well as its sales and marketing activities there, most recently with the February 2006 integration of existing Indian operations into the newly formed Wiley India Private Ltd., and the establishment of a new Singapore-based STM publishing program.
The company has been honored on several occasions for its sustained financial success and exceptional culture. In both 2007 and 2008, Wiley was named to the Forbes magazine's list of the "400 Best Big Companies in America." In 2007, Book Business magazine cited Wiley as "One of the 20 Best Book Publishing Companies to Work For." In 2006, Standard and Poor's added Wiley to its MidCap 400 Index. For two consecutive years, 2006 and 2005, FORTUNE magazine named Wiley one of the "100 Best Companies to Work For." Wiley Canada was named to Canadian Business magazine's 2006 list of "Best Workplaces in Canada," and Wiley Australia has received the Australian government's "Employer of Choice for Women" citation every year since its inception in 2001. In 2004, Wiley was named to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's "Best Workplaces for Commuters" list. Working Mother magazine in 2003 listed Wiley as one of the "100 Best Companies for Working Mothers", and that same year, the company received the Enterprise Award from the New Jersey Business & Industry Association in recognition of its contribution to the state's economic growth. In 1998, Wiley was selected as one of the "most respected companies," with a "strong and well thought out strategy," by the Financial Times in a global survey of Chief Executive Officers. Wiley was the only publisher on a list that included such global brand names as General Electric, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Intel, and Proctor & Gamble.
For over 200 years, Wiley has grown and evolved, taking pride in its ability to meet the changing needs of its customers. The company's current migration to the digital world is the latest example of this kind of transformation. Given Wiley's solid financial position, experienced leadership team, talented workforce, and proven strategies for generating results, the years ahead promise to bring exciting opportunities for continued growth and prosperity. Wiley is a far cry from Charles Wiley's small printing shop, but the company's commitment to quality and to serving the needs of its customers has not changed since 1807.
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Introducing selected titles
References:
www.wiley.com
Category:
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Two years later, Charles Wiley formed a printing, publishing, and bookselling partnership with Cornelius Van Winkle, a noted printer, located at 3 Wall Street. At this site Wiley also hosted 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 many other writers.
When Charles Wiley died in 1826, his son John, then age 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 Wiley's worldwide reputation in these markets today. 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 Great 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 one million dollars for the first time, and passed the two million mark 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 first member of the sixth generation of the family in the business when she joined its staff in 1968. She currently serves as Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications. Her brothers, Bradford Wiley II and Peter Booth Wiley, also become active in the company's operations and governance. A Director since 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 in September 2002 was installed as Chairman, succeeding Brad, who continues to serve as a Board member.
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 Corporation. In 1984, Wiley acquired Scripta-Technica, a scientific journals publisher and translator. The Business, Law, and General Books division (soon renamed the Professional/Trade publishing division, as it is known today) was founded in 1985.
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, Professional Group (which included journals, STM publishing, and the recently renamed Professional/Trade publishing division) 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 profitability and gain market share. A strategic program was developed and implemented to strengthen its 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.
Wiley significantly expanded its scientific, technical, and medical publishing program with the 1989 acquisition of Alan R. Liss, Inc., a leading publisher of journals and books in the life sciences. In 1996, Wiley acquired a 90% interest in VCH, an important scientific, technical, and professional publisher based in Germany, for approximately $99 million. VCH has a longstanding publishing partnership with the German Chemical Society, and 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, environmental/industrial science, culinary arts/hospitality, and business technology, for approximately $28 million. Various smaller acquisitions also added to growth throughout the mid- and late 1990s, and publishing partnerships and alliances offered still another avenue for expansion; through Wiley's alliance with the American Cancer Society, the company became the publisher of Cancer, the Society's flagship journal.
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 established www.wiley.com as its corporate Web site in May 1995. The site has evolved considerably since then, and now offers the full range of Wiley's products, brands, and services. Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) launched commercially in January 1999 as the company's online platform for scientific, technical, medical, and professional content. Today Wiley InterScience provides access to more than 3 million articles across 1,400 journals, including 1.6 million journal articles gained through the 2007 acquisition of Blackwell Publishing (described below) that were formerly hosted on the Blackwell Synergy platform. It also includes over 6,000 titles from OnlineBooks™, major reference works, and industry-leading databases and laboratory manuals. In 2007, Wiley's bicentennial year, the company completed an initiative to digitize its entire historical journal holdings, making 8.2 million pages of content dating back to 1799 available on Wiley InterScience. It is one of the largest such archives in the world.
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., for approximately $184.9 million. 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. Branded Wiley Web sites such as www.dummies.com, www.frommers.com, and www.cliffsnotes.com are increasingly generating significant revenue from licensing, advertising, partnerships, and product sales.
During the summer of 2002, Wiley relocated its global headquarters from New York City to a new building on the waterfront in Hoboken, New Jersey.
In 2007 Wiley completed the acquisition of the outstanding shares of the U.K.-based Blackwell Publishing (Holdings) Ltd., one of the world's foremost academic and professional publishers, for $1.1 billion (£572 million), making it the largest acquisition in the company's history. Blackwell's publishing program has been merged with Wiley's global scientific, technical, and medical business to form what is now called Scientific, Technical, Medical, and Scholarly, also known as Wiley-Blackwell, the largest of Wiley's three core businesses. The combined business publishes approximately 1,400 scholarly peer-reviewed journals as well as an extensive collection of books with global appeal. According to the Thomson ISI® 2006 ISI Journal Citation Reports, Wiley and Blackwell combined publish more journals in the Social Science Citation Index than any other publisher. Since June 2008, online Blackwell journals formerly hosted on Blackwell Synergy have been available through Wiley InterScience, and a next-generation online publishing platform will launch in early 2009 for Wiley-Blackwell electronic content and resources.
The company has continued to make small but strategic acquisitions. Some recent acquisitions include Anker Publishing Company, Inc., a publisher of books and periodicals for professionals in higher education; Whatsonwhen Ltd., a U.K.-based provider of travel-related online content, technology and related services; Health Economics Evaluation Database (HEED), a U.K.-based online provider of health economics information and evaluation; Carpe Diem publications; Whurr Publishers Limited, a London-based publisher of books and journals in the health sciences and special education; Fernhurst Books (now Wiley Nautical), a U.K.-based publisher of books, manuals, and guides on nautical sports; InfoPOEMs, Inc., a provider of evidence-based medicine content delivered via desktop computers and personal digital assistants; Sybex, Inc., a global publisher of books and software for the information technology professional; the reference portfolio of the Nature Publishing Group; the book list of Professional Engineering Publishing; and the publishing arm of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers.
In recent years, the company has focused its efforts on delivering Wiley's deep reservoir of 'must-have' content to global communities of interest, forming many collaborative relationships in order to further this objective. Partners include Lincoln Center, Microsoft, Yahoo, CFA Institute, Morningstar, Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Culinary Institute of America, General Mills, the American Institute of Architects, the American Society of Interior Designers, the Institute for Scientific Information, netLibrary, Acadient, Caliber, Lightning Source, Fast Company, Versaware, Blackboard, Science News, the National Geographic Society, the American Museum of Natural History, and Rand McNally & Company. The company has formed strategic alliances with dozens of prestigious societies; in addition to the American Cancer Society, Wiley's society partners include the Society of Chemical Industry, the Orthopaedic Research Society, and the Society of Hospital Medicine. Wiley has gained many other society partners through the acquisition of Blackwell, which publishes well over 550 journals on behalf of societies. Wiley also partners with The Cochrane Collaboration to publish the Cochrane Library of evidence-based medicine databases.
Wiley is committed to providing customers with the information they want, when and how they want it. With WileyPLUS™ (www.wileyplus.com), we are offering digital Higher Education texts that are integrated with resources for online study and administration of homework, tests, and other course elements, in a way proven to engage students while helping them master topics and achieve better grades. WileyPLUS and Wiley InterScience are both transforming Wiley's relationships with customers; they allow us to see how users interact with our content, providing valuable feedback that guides us in developing better products and solutions for them. Higher Education responds to evolving markets; the Wiley Pathways series, introduced in 2006, targets the growing group of students, often working and with families, who are pursuing their post-secondary education with a strong career focus.
By partnering with respected companies and organizations, Wiley extends its expertise and offers new approaches to teaching and learning. At the beginning of the 2007 fiscal year, Wiley became Microsoft's sole publishing partner worldwide for all Microsoft Official Academic Course (MOAC) materials, used in college courses that train and certify students in Microsoft technologies. Wiley is collaborating with Microsoft on a new co-branded series of textbook and e-learning products, and also sells existing MOAC titles. Wiley extended its global alliance with the National Geographic Society (NGS) to create the Wiley Visualizing series. These introductory higher education texts incorporate the NGS's superb images, maps, and videos, and use a unique visual approach to maximize learning.
Wiley's leadership helped to forge an unprecedented alliance among more than 1,400 major publishers worldwide to form CrossRef, an online journal reference linking service that is revolutionizing the research process. Wiley and Blackwell have both also participated in such initiatives as Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI), sponsored by the World Health Organization; Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA), sponsored by the Food and Agriculture Organization; and Online Access to Research in the Environment (OARE), sponsored by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), three projects that bring open or low-cost access to leading STM journals to end-users in developing nations. The company has also worked closely with key health organizations and other publishers to develop patientINFORM (www.patientinform.org,), a free online service disseminating original medical research directly to patients and their caregivers.
In February 2007, Wiley joined with the New York Public Library's Science, Industry and Business Library (SIBL) to provide Library users broad, public online access to over 300 peer-reviewed journals that until now have been available principally through academic or corporate collections. For the first time at each of the Library's four research libraries -SIBL, Humanities and Social Science Library, Library for the Performing Arts, and the Schomburg Center for research in Black Culture - users have the ability to electronically access the full-text of journal articles online via Wiley InterScience.
Wiley has seen vigorous growth and dramatic change since the early 1990s. In financial terms, revenues increased from less than $300 million in FY1990 to over $1 billion in FY2007. During the same period, the company's market capitalization increased from about $100 million to over $2 billion. Over the past decade, Wiley's revenue has increased by 11% per year (CAGR) and its earnings per share has risen by 18% per year (CAGR).
With Asia emerging as both a dynamic market and a vital source of Wiley content, the company has substantially increased its publishing as well as its sales and marketing activities there, most recently with the February 2006 integration of existing Indian operations into the newly formed Wiley India Private Ltd., and the establishment of a new Singapore-based STM publishing program.
The company has been honored on several occasions for its sustained financial success and exceptional culture. In both 2007 and 2008, Wiley was named to the Forbes magazine's list of the "400 Best Big Companies in America." In 2007, Book Business magazine cited Wiley as "One of the 20 Best Book Publishing Companies to Work For." In 2006, Standard and Poor's added Wiley to its MidCap 400 Index. For two consecutive years, 2006 and 2005, FORTUNE magazine named Wiley one of the "100 Best Companies to Work For." Wiley Canada was named to Canadian Business magazine's 2006 list of "Best Workplaces in Canada," and Wiley Australia has received the Australian government's "Employer of Choice for Women" citation every year since its inception in 2001. In 2004, Wiley was named to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's "Best Workplaces for Commuters" list. Working Mother magazine in 2003 listed Wiley as one of the "100 Best Companies for Working Mothers", and that same year, the company received the Enterprise Award from the New Jersey Business & Industry Association in recognition of its contribution to the state's economic growth. In 1998, Wiley was selected as one of the "most respected companies," with a "strong and well thought out strategy," by the Financial Times in a global survey of Chief Executive Officers. Wiley was the only publisher on a list that included such global brand names as General Electric, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Intel, and Proctor & Gamble.
For over 200 years, Wiley has grown and evolved, taking pride in its ability to meet the changing needs of its customers. The company's current migration to the digital world is the latest example of this kind of transformation. Given Wiley's solid financial position, experienced leadership team, talented workforce, and proven strategies for generating results, the years ahead promise to bring exciting opportunities for continued growth and prosperity. Wiley is a far cry from Charles Wiley's small printing shop, but the company's commitment to quality and to serving the needs of its customers has not changed since 1807.
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Introducing selected titles
References:
www.wiley.com
Category:
Articles
Book Publishing
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