Atria Books

Atria Publishing Group is a general interest publisher and a division of Simon & Schuster. The publishing group launched as Atria Books in 2002. The Atria Publishing Group was later created internally at Simon & Schuster to house a number of imprints including Atria Books, Atria Trade Paperbacks, Atrai Books Espanol, Atria Unbound, Washington Square Press, Emily Bestler Books, Atria/Beyond Words, Cash Money Content, Howard Books, Marble Arch Press, Strebor Books, 37 Ink, Keywords Press and Enliven Books. Atria is also known for creating innovative imprints and co-publishing deals with African-American writers as well as known for experimenting with digital or non-traditional print formats and authors.

As of 2017, Judith Curr is the President and Publisher of the Atria Publishing Group.

The Atria Books imprint was launched in 2002 by Judith Curr. According to a Publisher's Weekly interview with Curr marking the imprint's 10th anniversary, the name Atria is "plural for a place where things grow and flourish." Curr wanted a name that embodied their intentions to build a bridge between the reader and the writer. Because she was starting a new business inside an old established one (Simon & Schuster was founded in 1924), Curr also gave it an "A" name so it "would be at the top of everyone's memo and everything is in alphabetical order at a publisher."

In 2005, Simon & Schuster acquired Strebor Books International and publisher of popular fiction by African-American writers including Black Erotica by Zane. Zane would remain the publisher of the imprint with an office in Maryland. The publisher had been founded independently in 1999. In 2013 it was announced that publisher Kristina Laferne Roberts had declared bankruptcy.

In 2009, Atria was the first publisher to partner with Vook. Curr took on publishing the first four of them as she wanted to integrate digital practices into Atria. Curr recognized that digital and traditional printing practices would go "hand in glove." The work with Vook lead to the creation of the Atria Smartbook—a physical piece of paper with QR codes throughout the text for enhanced content. Curr told the Digital Book World, "every week I get a report that tells me how many people have interacted with those pieces of content. And now I've got this whole idea of how to turn the book itself into a store."

Atria Books publishes a wide variety of both fiction and non-fiction and strives to publish a diverse set of books and authors. This includes programs for diverse voices, Internet personalities and self-published authors with proven track records. In some cases, an editor is given their own imprint with their name on it as with Emily Bestler in 2011.

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