Picador was founded in the U.K. in 1972, with the U.S. division opening its doors in 1995. Originally founded as both a literary hardcover imprint under St. Martin's Press and as a quality paperback reprint imprint for some of SMP's titles, it later added reprint titles from other Macmillan imprints Farrar, Straus & Giroux and Henry Holt and Company.
Twenty years later, the backlist now includes 1500-plus titles, with a yearly reprint output of around 100 paperbacks and with a stellar list of authors drawn from Picador's sister imprints, including: Paul Auster, Jeff Chang, Michael Cunningham, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Franzen, Atul Gawande, Elizabeth Kolbert, Ann Leary, Hilary Mantel, Marilynne Robinson, Robin Sloan, Olen Steinhauer, Hector Tobar and Adelle Waldman, among others.
Much has changed in Picador's publishing approach in the past two decades--for a time, the imprint stopped publishing hardcovers, but it has stayed true to its reprinting focus, and in the last two years it has returned to the second piece of its original mission: original publishing.
After current v-p and publisher Stephen Morrison joined Picador in 2012 from Penguin Books, "We decided to do more original publishing," he said. "We're two years into a full program, and it's proving to be a lot of fun. We're finding our original voice, and figuring out what we do well. By following our editorial noses, we've found exciting new voices, great storytellers and writers with provocative ideas, and we're working hard to introduce them with vigor and enthusiasm."
Picador publishes some 20-30 originals a year, mostly in hardcover. Given that so much "wonderful fiction" comes to Picador from its sister imprints, Picador is currently keeping its original fiction list small, choosing authors very carefully, while the majority of its originals are turning out to be nonfiction. Many of the titles are about topics "bubbling around in the culture," Morrison said. This makes publishing the books "particularly fun" for editorial, publicity and marketing. And like Picador's paperbacks, its original titles are resonating with independent bookstores.
Recent Picador original titles that have provoked conversation, bookseller support and multiple printings have delved into all sorts of topics: from the rise of South Korean "soft power" (The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture by Euny Hong ($16, 9781250045119)); to our fascination with all things Scandinavian (The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia by Michael Booth ($26, 9781250061966)); to Nation columnist Katha Pollitt's provocative Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights ($16, 9781250072665); Meghan Daum's much discussed anthology Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids; and in the last few weeks, Damon Tweedy's Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor's Reflections on Race and Medicine ($26, 9781250044631), which was both a BEA Buzz panel pick and an instant New York Times bestseller.