Western Publishing
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This is a page about the company Western Publishing. If you are looking for publishing in the western world, see publishing.
Western Publishing, also known as "Western Printing and Lithographing Co." was a large publishing company that put out books, magazines, comic books and other items. The company no longer exists. It was established in 1907 as "West Side Printing Company", changing its name in 1910. The firm was based in Racine, WI, with editorial offices in both New York and Los Angeles, and another printing plant in Poughkeepsie, NY. In 1915 the company bought out Chicago publisher Hamming-Whitman Publishing Co, which became their subsidiary Whitman Publishing Company. Another subsidiary was "K.K. Publications", named after Kay Kamen, head of character merchandising at Walt Disney Studios from 1933-1949. K.K. Publications seemed to have ended in the mid/late 1960s.
Most people are unaware of Western Publishing, because everything they published was under other names (Whitman, Golden, etc). They produced comic books, a wide-range of children's books, and some adult books, many of them distributed outside the normal publication channels.
- Comic Books. Western owned licenses for the characters from Walt Disney Productions, Warner Brothers, Metro Goldwyn Mayer, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Walter Lantz Studio, and produced comics based on these characters (and others) as well as original works. From 1938 to 1962, they did so for Dell Comics. In 1962, Western decided to publish comics themselves, and set up Gold Key Comics. They used this line until the late 1970s, replaced by "Whitman Comics". They stopped publishing comics in 1984, and all their licenses have since gone to other publishers. Some of their comics were published under that name, especially March of Comics. Dark Horse Comics has recently been doing some reprints of their original comic book properties, which are owned by Random House.
- Children's Books. Western published a wide range of children books (puzzle books, coloring books, Big Little Books, etc), mostly under the Golden Books and Whitman Publishing line since the 1920/30. The Little Golden Books was a very popular line.
- Auto Service Manuals. Western printed auto service manuals for Volvo up to at least 1989.
- Other. The popular line of nature guides, Golden Guide, were published under the Golden Press name. This line has since been revived by St. Martin's Press. They published a line of guidebooks for coin collectors under the Whitman name, which has gone to H.E. Harris.
Mattel bought Western in 1982, then sold it off in 1984. Under new ownership, it renamed itself "Golden Books Family Entertainment" and tried to focus on children's books. It sold off the adult books (Golden Guide) to St. Martin's Press in 1999, and later the H.E. Harris coin company would buy Whitman Coin Products from St. Martin’s Press in 2003 and rename as Whitman Publishing. Golden Books Family Entertainment was bought out by Random House in 2001.
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