Virgin Books is a British book publisher 90% owned by the publishing group

Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Ger ...

, and 10% owned by Virgin Group, the company originally set up by

Richard Branson Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (born 18 July 1950) is a British billionaire, entrepreneur, and business magnate. In the 1970s he founded the Virgin Group, which today controls more than 400 companies in various fields. Branson expresse ...

as a record company.

History

Virgin established its book publishing arm in the late 1970s; in the latter part of the 1980s Virgin purchased several existing companies, including WH Allen, well known among '' Doctor Who'' fans for their Target Books imprint; Virgin Books was incorporated into WH Allen in 1989, but in 1991 WH Allen was renamed Virgin Publishing Ltd. Virgin Publishing's early success came with the ''Doctor Who'' New Adventures novels, officially licensed full-length novels carrying on the story of the popular science-fiction television series following its cancellation in 1989. Virgin published this series from 1991 to 1997, as well as a range of ''Doctor Who'' reference books from 1992 to 1998 under the Doctor Who Books imprint. In recent times the company is best known for its commercial non-fiction list, which includes business, health and lifestyle, music, film, and celebrity biographies.

's autobiography '' Losing My Virginity'', released in 1998, was an international best-seller at the time, and continues to sell well. His follow-up title ''Business Stripped Bare'' was published in September 2008. Virgin Business Guides included titles by Robert Craven, Paul Barrow and Rachelle Thackray. More recently the company has enjoyed success with Robert H Frank's ''The Economic Naturalist'', where the author had his economics students pose interesting questions from everyday life and explain them through economics.

, through its United Kingdom division, acquired a 90% stake in the company in March 2007.Joel Rickett
Random House UK buys Virgin Books
, ''

The Bookseller ''The Bookseller'' is a British magazine reporting news on the publishing industry. Philip Jones is editor-in-chief of the weekly print edition of the magazine and the website. The magazine is home to the ''Bookseller''/Diagram Prize for Oddest ...

'', 5 March 2007 (via archive.org) In November 2009, Virgin became an independent imprint within Ebury Publishing, a division of the Random House Group.

Imprints

Other popular ranges have included various erotic fiction lines: * Black Lace specializes in erotica and erotic romance written by female authors specifically for heterosexual female readers. The imprint does not publish novels written by men partly as a marketing scheme, partly to better appeal to their target demographic. The books explore women's sexuality as well as such themes as BDSM,

group sex Group sex is sexual behavior involving more than two participants. Participants in group sex can be of any sexual orientation or gender. Any form of sexual activity can be adopted to involve more than two participants, but some forms have t ...

and

bisexuality Bisexuality is a romantic or sexual attraction or behavior toward both males and females, or to more than one gender. It may also be defined to include romantic or sexual attraction to people regardless of their sex or gender identity, wh ...

. The imprint began publishing in 1993, has published over 250 titles and sold over three million books. In 2006, Black Lace developed three specific lines within the imprint: contemporary, historical and paranormal. Black Lace also publishes short story anthologies, novella collections and in 2007 launched its first trilogy, a series of werewolf erotica by Mathilde Madden. The imprint marked its fifteen-year anniversary in 2008 with re-issues of several of its original novels. In 2009, Virgin announced that Black Lace would add no new titles in 2010.Benedicte Page
Erotica on hold for Black Lace and Nexus at Virgin
''

'', 6 July 2009 The line was relaunched in 2012.Benedicte Page
Ebury to revive Black Lace
''

'', 26 April 2012 * Nexus Books, sado-masochistic pornography written mostly for men who have sex with women, and women who have sex with men or women. In 2009, Virgin announced that Nexus would add no new titles in 2010. * Idol for gay men (defunct). * Sapphire for lesbians (defunct).

References

External links

* {{Authority control Book publishing companies of the United Kingdom

Books A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physica ...

Publishers of Doctor Who books BDSM publishers British companies established in 1979 1979 establishments in England Publishing companies established in 1979