Please visit www.sourcebooks.com and www.sphinxlegal.com to learn more about us.
In 1987, a determined Dominique Raccah left a promising career with advertising giant Leo Burnett, cashed in $17,000 from her 401K plan and launched a publishing house from her upstairs bedroom. She called it Sourcebooks.
Over the years, Sourcebooks has grown and flourished by following its independent vision, publishing extraordinary authors and unique books with readers in mind. Noted for its strong publicity and marketing efforts on behalf of its authors and retailers, Sourcebooks stands today as one of the leading independent book publishers in North America.
Founded with one title, Financial Sourcebooks Sources, Sourcebooks initially focused on publishing professional finance titles and books for bankers. In the early 1990s, Sourcebooks had its initial success in bookstores with business titles like The Small Business Survival Guide and The Complete Book of Business Plans, titles that continue to thrive for the company today.
Sourcebooks also began expanding outside business and finance with a highly successful gift book for women entitled Finding Time. In 1993, Sourcebooks partnered with retailer Sally Beauty Supply to develop and publish 500 Beauty Solutions, later expanded to 1001 Beauty Solutions. These books led to Sourcebooks’ first six-figure print run, and furthered its penetration into other general trade books and nonbookstore markets. From the early 1990s to today, self-help, parenting, business and reference paperbacks have always formed a backbone of the Sourcebooks list.
In 1997, just ten years after its conception, Sourcebooks was listed by trade magazine Publishers Weekly as the sixth-fastest-growing small publisher in the country; it would move up to No. 3 in just the next year. Its 1999 appearance at No. 2 was Sourcebooks’ final time on the list—the company is now too large to be eligible. Sourcebooks’ sales figures also reflected its success by doubling every two years during this era.
Sourcebooks’ growth has also been due in part to frequent acquisitions of imprints that continue to thrive today. In 1996, Sourcebooks added the Casablanca Press imprint with love- and romance-oriented self-help books, including the legendary bestseller 1001 Ways To Be Romantic by Gregory Godek. In 1998, Sourcebooks purchased Hysteria Publications, a Connecticut-based publisher of humor and women’s interest books.
In between, Sphinx Publishing, a Florida-based publisher of self-help law books, was also acquired. Since then, Sphinx has grown many times over, firmly establishing itself among the top sources of consumer legal information in the country. Its line of national and state-specific titles help take the mystery out of the law for everyday people, and the imprint continues to expand into new arenas, including Spanish-language titles, college reference and citizens' rights.
Sourcebooks’ growth continued to accelerate from there. In the summer of 1998, the publisher was the talk of BookExpo America with We Interrupt This Broadcast by Joe Garner. The book, featuring two compact discs with integrated content, was the introduction of a new genre for the publishing industry, and the birth of a new chapter for Sourcebooks. It was also by far Sourcebooks' largest first printing with 150,000 copies, and went on to become Sourcebooks’ first New York Times bestseller. The brilliant pairing of live audio with photographs and the written word resonated enormous interest within the bookselling community and generated more than 700,000 copies sold to date.
In 1999, half a million copies of the sports-themed And The Crowd Goes Wild landed in stores for the holiday season. Featuring compact discs narrated by broadcast sports journalist Bob Costas, the book was an immediate sensation, spending nine weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. In Publishers Weekly’s ranking of the bestsellers of 1999, the trade publication identified Sourcebooks with five books from three different authors. This put Sourcebooks on the same level of publishers and imprints twice its size and six times its age, such as Knopf, Morrow, Norton and Houghton Mifflin.
The new century dawned brightly as Sourcebooks celebrated January 2000 with two titles on the first New York Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller list of the twenty-first century. Shortly thereafter, it became the only book publisher named to that year's prestigious Inc. 500, the annual ranking of America’s fastest-growing companies.
Later in the year 2000, Sourcebooks formalized the launch of its Sourcebooks MediaFusion imprint, the nation's leading publisher of books with integrated mixed-media. And The Crowd Goes Wild merited a follow-up, And The Fans Roared, which became a holiday favorite, hitting the New York Times list in January 2001.
In 2001, Sourcebooks MediaFusion reinvigorated the way Americans experience poetry with Poetry Speaks, a book and three-CD combination featuring noted poets from Tennyson to Plath reading their own work. This remarkable anthology, a New York Times extended list bestseller, was lauded by Publishers Weekly as having "the potential to draw more readers to poetry than any collection in years."
2001 also featured the launch of its fiction imprint, Sourcebooks Landmark, so named to reflect the quality, value and longevity of its books. Tony Parsons’ Man and Boy, the 2000 British Book of the Year, and bookseller favorite Michael Malone led the way. Malone returned to writing fiction after a ten-year absence with the Book Sense 76 selection and New York Times extended list bestseller First Lady, as well as reissues of all his backlist, including Handling Sin, Foolscap, Time’s Witness and Uncivil Seasons.
Sourcebooks again claimed space on bestseller lists in spring 2003, placing Charles Cerami's engrossing history Jefferson's Great Gamble on the New York Times nonfiction hardcover extended list. At the same time, chef Cary Neff's bold, unique and flavorful style of cooking made Conscious Cuisine a favorite. Boosted by an appearance on Oprah, Conscious Cuisine made Neff a New York Times bestselling author in his first effort.
Over the past several seasons, Sourcebooks’ roster of hundreds of talented writers has also welcomed the notable additions of college expert Edward B. Fiske (The Fiske Guide to Colleges, The Fiske Guide to Getting into the Right College), NPR commentator and Sports Illustrated writer Frank Deford (An American Summer), noted relationships expert Anne Hooper (269 Sex Tips & Tricks for Men and Women), CBS Early Show host Hannah Storm (Go Girl!) and the staff of U.S.News & World Report.
Today, Sourcebooks continues to publish titles in nearly every shape, size, format and subject. Its future is guided by its continuing commitment to reaching readers with books that will illuminate, inspire and enlighten their lives.
To be continued..
Sourcebooks, Inc.
1935 Brookdale Rd, Suite 139
Naperville, IL 60563
Phone: (800) 43-BRIGHT
Phone: (630) 961-3900
Fax: (630) 961-2168
