Times Books began as the New York Times Book Company in 1969,[1] when The New York Times Company purchased Quadrangle Books, a small publishing house in Chicago, founded in 1959 by Michael Braude. Its president was Melvin J. Brisk. Initially run entirely by The New York Times Company, the publishing arm name was changed to Times Books in 1977.
In 1984, the Times Company licensed the imprint to Random House. From 1991 through 1996, during the Random House tenure, the head of Times Books was Peter Osnos, who later founded Public Affairs Books.[2][3]
Times Books was re-licensed in 2000 as an imprint of Henry Holt, which is itself an imprint[4] of Holtzbrinck Publishers/Macmillan, the U.S. arm of the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group.
Editorial directors for Times Books have included David Sobel[5] and Paul Golob.[6]
^ abGabriel Sherman and Sheelah Kolhatkar (26 March 2006). "Off the Record". The New York Observer. Archived from the original on 14 December 2007. Through most of its history, The Times has been reluctant, unlike The Washington Post, to serve as a veritable Yaddo for a Bob Woodward class of author-reporter. "It goes way beyond [Woodward]," said one Post reporter who recently wrote a book.『I literally tried to count—there are 25 people in the newsroom who are currently writing or going off to write books. The Post is very nurturing of that. They understand it's to its benefit.』 "Nobody at The Times will get the deal Woodward has," the senior Times staffer said. Times tradition has put the newspaper above all, encouraging budding authors to get lost—so long, Gay Talese!—or to accept punishingly cheap deals from The Times' house imprint.
