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 based in Racine, WI, with editorial offices in both New York and Los Angeles. The company no longer exists. 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. Another imprint was "K.K. Publications", apparently named after Kay Kamen, a licensor of the Disney products, which was probably a subsidiary of Western.
Most people are unaware of Western Publishing, because everything they published was under other names. 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, 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. Dark Horse Comics has recently been doing some reprints of their original comic book properties.
- 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. 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.