Weldon Owen Takes on the World

"We create high-end, lavishly produced, beautiful books, and we look for brands that can benefit from our creative input and customers who occupy a distinct niche in the market," says Terry Newell, CEO of book publisher Weldon Owen.

Established in Sydney, Australia in 1984, Weldon Owen is now an international publishing company with published books in many countries including New Zealand, England, Ireland, Latin America, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands, Portugal, Turkey, Moldova, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. Since its first publication in 1985, The company's Beautiful Cookbook series which sold 5 million copies across 17 titles in 14 languages, Weldon Owen has always focused on quality.

The company's list covers a range of topics, including cooking, family reference, and children's reference. Also within the company is the imprint Fog City Press, which uses brand partnerships to offer low-priced but high quality books with mass market appeal. In total, there are publications in over 25 different languages around the world. "Our most successful international co-edition of all time has been Show Me How, published in 30 countries and 20 languages," says Newell. "Our core business continues to be in selling our books in translation throughout the world."

Weldon Owen also specializes in branded books: books for and with the names of leading brands. "Branded books are created with a consumer or corporate brand partnering on the content, the style, the message, and directed at a specific consumer," says Newell, "We do branded books for a number of companies, such as Williams-Sonoma, Gymboree, Kellogg's, The Body Shop and more. These books have many customers who already like the brand, and have high recognition in the marketplace, so they sell well."

When looking inside of these branded books, however, one will notice that Weldon Owen is not always listed as the publisher. "As a book packager, we have a team of creatives who make all of the content and also produce the books," says Newell. "We then sell publishing rights to book publishers throughout the world.

The company has undergone changes in recent years. In 2008, it was split into three companies: Weldon Owen, Inc in the United States, Weldon Owen Education in New Zealand, and Weldon Owen Party Ltd. in Australia. "Each company now reports separately to different parent companies so that we are not able to perform comparisons to 2006," says Newell. And this is where Bonnier comes into the picture. "As of January, the San Francisco office is independently operated in the U.S., reporting to the Bonnier Magazine group in New York, and doing new branded books with Bonnier Magazine brands. We already have books underway with Saveur, Parenting, Field & Stream, and Popular Science."