book-publishing
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The Agency That Treats a Book Like a Beginning
Aevitas was assembled from agencies that learned the same lesson: a manuscript is only the first version of an idea. The real business is helping that idea travel - across publishers, languages, formats and, increasingly, screens.
The Book Was Only the Beginning
Authority On Demand began by turning experts into authors. Then it made a sharper bet: the real product was never the book - it was the trust the book could start.
Todd Shuster Keeps Finding the Door Between a Book and the Wider World
The Aevitas co-CEO began in publishing law, built an agency around durable ideas, and followed stories from reporters’ notebooks to bestseller lists, cinema screens, and a children’s fable about peace.
The Publisher Who Bet That Michigan Was Big Enough
MB Communications built a small publishing business around an unfashionable idea: the people closest to home can carry the biggest stories. Its advantage was never scale. It was knowing whom to call - and what everyone else had missed.
The Publisher That Treats the Book as a Business Card - Then Builds the Business Behind It
Best Seller Publishing makes books for experts who would rather sell a $10,000 engagement than a thousand $10 paperbacks. Its cleverest move is also its sharpest constraint: the book is not the business - it is the door into one.
Spiegel & Grau
Spiegel & Grau is a New York independent, multi-platform publisher founded by veteran editors Celina 'Cindy' Spiegel and Julie Grau. After Penguin Random House shuttered their acclaimed imprint in 2019, the pair relaunched as an indie house in 2021, deliberately capping their list at 15-20 books a year so each title gets full editorial care across print, audio, podcast, and screen. The house treats a story as an asset to be developed across formats rather than a single book to be printed, and its very first independent release, Catherine Raven's 'Fox and I,' hit the New York Times bestseller list out of the gate.
Celina "Cindy" Spiegel
Celina "Cindy" Spiegel is the co-founder and co-CEO of Spiegel & Grau, the independent New York publishing house she runs with her longtime partner Julie Grau. Over a 30-plus year editing career she helped launch the literary careers of James McBride, Khaled Hosseini, Bryan Stevenson, Chang-rae Lee and Gary Shteyngart, and edited bestsellers by Yuval Noah Harari, Yann Martel and Dan Pink. After Penguin Random House shut down their acclaimed imprint in 2019, Spiegel and Grau rebuilt it from scratch in 2020 as an independent house publishing 15 to 20 books a year alongside original audiobooks and podcasts.
Cindy Spiegel
Cindy Spiegel (born Celina Spiegel) is a New York book publisher and co-founder, with Julie Grau, of the independent press Spiegel & Grau. Over three decades she helped build Riverhead Books and the original Spiegel & Grau imprint, editing and launching authors including Khaled Hosseini, James McBride, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Bryan Stevenson, Trevor Noah and Piper Kerman. After Penguin Random House shut their imprint in 2019, the two partners rebuilt the company from scratch in 2020 as an independent house that pairs books with audio, podcasts and a first-look film and television deal.