Chilton Company

Chilton Publishing Company was founded in 1922 in West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Chilton is a publisher of periodicals, especially for automotive repair. The company expanded beyond the automotive industry, providing periodicals, conferences, and market research services to a wide variety of industries.

Background

After publishing many automotive-maintenance manuals, Chilton published the celebrated science fiction novels Dune by Frank Herbert (1965) and The Witches of Karres (1966) by James H. Schmitz. Each was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Novel in its respective year, and Dune won the award. Dune became the first of a series of six novels by Frank Herbert, which were followed by many books, mostly prequels, by his son, Brian Herbert, and Kevin Anderson, an unrelated but experienced author. Of these books, Chilton only published the first. In this respect, Chilton resembled the Naval Institute Press, which normally publishes naval history books and other textbooks used at the United States Naval Academy but in 1984 unaccountably published Tom Clancy's first novel—a surprise best seller—then allowed other publishers to handle his later books and returned to obscurity. The other choice was followed by Scholastic Press, which formerly published children's books and magazines but in 1997 published the first Harry Potter book in the U.S. and has continued to publish them, in the process becoming a much larger publisher, which has developed new strategies for dealing with bestsellers and the vast amounts of money they bring in.

According to Chilton's website:

After about 50 years in West Philadelphia , the company moved to Radnor, PA, where it found space to grow to nearly 900 employees. In 1985 Chilton became part of the publicly-traded Capital Cities, which later merged with ABC Inc. In 1996, Capital Cities and ABC were bought by the Walt Disney Company. By 1997, Disney sold the Chilton publishing assets, conference management and market research divisions to a variety of firms ... In 2003, the Thomson Corporation bought the Chilton automotive assets.

External links

• ChiltonsOnline.com
• RockAuto.comRetailer of Chilton Repair Literature on CD-ROM & DVD-ROM

See also

• Clymer repair manual
• Haynes Manuals