Country of origin United Kingdom No. of employees 23 | Publication types Books Founded 1986 | |
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Headquarters location 10 Bloomsbury Street, London WC1B 3SR Official website www.oneworld-publications.com Founders Novin Doostdar, Juliet Mabey Profiles | ||
Oneworld publications top 9 facts
Oneworld Publications is a British independent publishing firm founded in 1986 by Novin Doostdar and Juliet Mabey originally to publish accessible non-fiction by experts and academics for the general market. Based in London, it later added a literary fiction list (in 2009) and both a children's list (Rock the Boat, 2015) and an upmarket crime list (Point Blank, 2016), and now publishes across a wide range of subjects, including history, politics, current affairs, popular science, religion, philosophy, and psychology, as well as literary fiction, upmarket crime fiction and children's titles.
Contents
Among the writers on the Oneworld list are Marlon James, Paul Beatty, Gloria Steinem, Richard Adams, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Sean M. Carroll, Barnaby Phillips, Martin Bell, David McRaney, Jared Diamond, Ivor Crewe, Anthony King, Ilan Pappe, Mary Roach, Adam Frank, Peter Cave, Jean Sasson, William Poundstone, John Hick, Hans Küng, Helen Fisher, Atticus Lish, Peter Matthiessen, Amit Chaudhuri, Kamel Daoud, Caryl Phillips, Jane Urquhart, Sun-mi Hwang, Margaret Mazzantini, Yvvette Edwards, Joseph Boyden, and Deborah Kay Davies.
History
Oneworld Publications was founded in 1986 by Novin Doostdar and Juliet Mabey, who had met as students in the 1970s and subsequently married; the company's name reflects their international approach to publishing with global values, initially producing non-fiction "with a focus on bold, intelligent non-fiction across the humanities".
In 2009 Oneworld launched a literary fiction list to focus on publishing inspiring, intelligent and thought-provoking novels from around the world. The list has received a string of prizes and award nominations, among them winning the prestigious Man Booker Prize for two years running: in 2015 with A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James, and in 2016 with The Sellout by Paul Beatty, who became the first American winner of the prize. A Cupboard Full of Coats by Yvvette Edwards, a debut British novelist, was longlisted in 2011 for both the Man Booker Prize and the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, and was shortlisted in 2012 for the Commonwealth Book Prize. Reasons She Goes to the Woods by Deborah Kay Davies was also longlisted for the Baileys Prize in 2014 and 2016, as well as being shortlisted for the Encore Award in 2015. Also in 2015, Diane Cook's Man V. Nature was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, Ishmael’s Oranges by Claire Hajaj was shortlisted for the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award, and The Meursault Investigation — a multi-award winner in France — was longlisted for the FT Emerging Voices Award.
On the non-fiction side, Oneworld titles have received numerous prestigious prizes and nominations. The Particle at the End of the Universe by Sean Carroll won the prestigious Royal Society Winton Prize in 2013, for which Mary Roach's Gulp was also shortlisted the following year; Greg Grandin's The Empire of Necessity was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, while Serhii Plokhy's The Last Empire won the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize for 2015, and the same year saw a double shortlisting for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year for The Rise of the Robots by Martin Ford and Unfinished Business by Anne-Marie Slaughter.
Originally set up in Oxford, Oneworld bought its first permanent office in Bloomsbury, London, in 2012.
Oneworld now publishes around 100 titles a year, which are distributed worldwide by Random House (GBS) in the UK, by Publishers Group West in the United States, by Bloomsbury Publishing in Australia, by Pan Macmillan in Europe, India and the Middle East, by Penguin Group in the Far East, by Jonathan Ball in South Africa, and by a variety of regional distributors in Latin America and other territories.
Imprints
In 2015 Oneworld launched "Rock the Boat", a list of fiction and non-fiction for children and young adults 0-19, and announced the 2016 launch of a literary crime list, "Point Blank".
Awards
Oneworld received the Alison Morrison Diversity Award at the 2017 IPG Independent Publishing Awards, with the announcement noting: "Oneworld had another outstanding year in 2016, topped by a Man Booker Prize win for the second year running with Paul Beatty's The Sellout. Its list now features writers from more than 35 countries in 21 languages, and commitment to diversity also stretches to Oneworld’s own workforce and the support for entrants from a wide range of backgrounds. 'It's testament to an unflagging commitment to diversity, extending beyond that of race and culture to socio-economic, gender and disability issues,' judges said."