Paramount launches a book imprint
Paramount Skydance is moving upstream by launching Paramount Global Publishing to both extend franchises and develop original IP as lower‑cost proof points for screen adaptation. The new imprint is positioned as a way to own early-stage ideas and reduce reliance on buying outside IP, a vertical step that can make future screen greenlights less risky (variety.com) (deadline.com).
Paramount sold Simon & Schuster for $1.62 billion in October 2023, and on April 8, 2026 it jumped back into books anyway with a new in-house imprint called Paramount Global Publishing. The difference is that this time Paramount is not buying a full publisher with warehouses, sales teams, and thousands of outside authors; it is building a smaller unit to feed its own franchises and test new stories. (variety.com) (paramount.com) The new imprint sits inside Paramount’s Products & Experiences division, the part of the company that already handles consumer products and franchise extensions. Paramount said the line will publish print, digital, and audio titles in the United States and Canada first, with international expansion planned later. (paramount.com) (deadline.com) Part of the job is straightforward franchise work: books tied to brands Paramount already owns. Paramount named franchises including Star Trek, Mission: Impossible, SpongeBob SquarePants, Yellowstone, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as examples of the library it can mine for novels, companion books, and other formats. (paramount.com) (thewrap.com) The more revealing part is the second job: creating original stories that Paramount can own from day one. Instead of waiting for a novel, comic, or podcast from somewhere else to become hot and then paying to adapt it, Paramount can publish an idea itself, watch whether readers respond, and keep the screen rights under the same roof. (variety.com) (deadline.com) That is a cheaper way to do research and development than making a television pilot or a movie. A book can show whether a character, setting, or plot has an audience before Paramount spends tens of millions of dollars on sets, casts, and marketing. (variety.com) (hollywoodreporter.com) Hollywood has worked this way for years, just usually by shopping outside the building. Studios regularly option novels and nonfiction books as early proof points for adaptation, so Paramount is trying to move one step upstream and own more of that pipeline itself. (hollywoodreporter.com) (thebookseller.com) Paramount is also not cutting off the outside world. The company said it will keep licensing to third-party publishers, so the new imprint adds another lane rather than replacing existing book deals tied to its brands. (deadline.com) (paramount.com) Amy Jarashow, who was named senior vice president of global publishing, is leading the effort. Paramount said the imprint will use a distribution partner rather than build its own national book-distribution machine, which keeps the operation lighter than the old Simon & Schuster model Paramount exited in 2023. (paramount.com) (variety.com) The timing also fits the company Paramount has become after the Skydance deal. Paramount’s own announcement identified the parent as “Paramount, a Skydance Corporation,” and the new imprint gives the combined company one more internal source of intellectual property at a moment when every major studio is trying to cut risk and hang on to franchises longer. (paramount.com) (variety.com) So this is less a return to old-school book publishing than a new studio tool dressed like one. Paramount is using books as relatively low-cost test kitchens for future films and series, while also squeezing more life out of brands it already owns. (deadline.com) (paramount.com)
