The World Publishing Company was an American
publishing company founded by Alfred H. Cahen.
Originally headquartered in Cleveland, the
company later added an office in New York
City.
The company published genre fiction, trade
paperbacks, children's literature, nonfiction
books, textbooks, Bibles, and dictionaries,
primarily from 1940 to 1980.
Authors published by World Publishing Company
include Ruth Nanda Anshen, Michael Crichton,
Simone de Beauvoir, Robert Ludlum, Sam Moskowitz,
Ayn Rand, Rex Stout, Gay Talese, and Lin Yutang.
The company's Cleveland headquarters were
located in the Caxton Building.World Publishing
was notable for publishing the first edition
of Webster's New World Dictionary in 1951,
which contained 142,000 entries, said to be
the largest American desk dictionary available
at the time.
The company also had a vibrant children's
book division, and published the first edition
of Eric Carle's Very Hungry Caterpillar in
1969.World Publishing Company is not related
to the original owners of the Omaha World-Herald
or Tulsa World (also called "World Publishing
Co.").
== History ==
Polish immigrant Alfred H. Cahen founded the
Commercial Bookbinding Co. in Cleveland, Ohio,
in 1902, expanding and adding a printing plant
by 1912.
In 1928 Cahen bought out his largest competitor,
New York's World Syndicate Publishing Co.,
officially taking on the name World Publishing
Co. in 1935.
(At that point, the company added an office
in New York City.)
At the time the largest publisher of the King
James Bible, in 1940 Cahen's son-in-law, Ben
Zevin, expanded the company's output by publishing
inexpensive editions of classic literature,
which were sold in variety stores and drugstores
as well as bookstores.
Under Zevin's leadership, in 1940 World Publishing
introduced the hugely popular Tower Books
imprint: a 49-cent line of hardcovers which
featured such authors as mystery writer Rex
Stout.
(This "Tower Books" was not related to the
Tower Publications imprint that operated from
1958–1981.)
From 1942 to 1964 William Targ worked as an
editor for World Publishing, eventually becoming
editor-in-chief.
As time passed, World Publishing expanded
its repertoire to all types of fiction, nonfiction,
sports, the classics, and philosophy.
The Times Mirror Company acquired World Publishing
in 1962.
By this time, World Publishing was producing
12 million books a year, one of only three
American publishers to produce that much volume.
In 1974, the Times Mirror Co. sold World Publishing
to the U.K.-based Collins Publishers, with
the trade publishing remaining with Times
Mirror's New American Library subsidiary.
In 1980 Collins broke up World Publishing,
selling its children's line to the Putnam
Publishing Group, the dictionary line to Simon
and Schuster, and otherwise ridding itself
of World's assets
