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| Insight Editions' founder and publisher Raoul Goff | |
From its beginnings more than 20 years ago, Insight Editions has focused on what founder and publisher Raoul Goff calls "immersive, tactile products that are designed to engage fans and provide a deeper connection to their favorite worlds." Working with major studios, brands, musicians, celebrities, sports organizations and others, Insight Editions' books celebrate the best in cultural milestones in pop culture, gaming, comics, music, art and photography, film, television and sports. Its titles include everything from beautiful coffee-table books to pop-up books and graphic novels, from model-building titles to journals and stationery.
It's a multimedia company that continues to expand. This year alone, Insight Editions is launching three new divisions: IncrediBuilds, a line of collectible 3D wood models; Insight Comics, a comics and graphic novel imprint; and a cookbook line. Insight Editions imprints include Mandala Publishing, which focuses on Eastern art and wisdom; Earth Aware Editions, which offers titles with a focus on nature, sustainability, and environmental issues; Insight Collectibles, a high-end line of limited editions, prop-replicas, and figures distributed by Sideshow Collectibles; Insight Kids, which focuses on design-intensive, interactive children's formats; and Insights, a full line of stationery and gifts, including writing journals, sketchbooks, stationery sets, and poster books.
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| Insight COO Michael Madden | |
Founded in 1994 as a book production and design company, Insight Editions started to publish under its own name in 2001. "We got to the point where we were becoming a go-to creative team for some of the largest publishers in the world on challenging projects that both called for complex design and production," chief operating officer Michael Madden explains. "We discovered that there was a real demand for our approach. That led us to turn our energies toward developing our own projects in house and forging our own identity as a publisher."
At first, Insight Editions had a music emphasis, publishing such titles as Rolling Stones 40x20, Between Midnight and Day: The Last Unpublished Blues Archive, Days of Hope and Dreams: An Intimate Portrait of Bruce Springsteen and Jerry Garcia: The Collected Artwork. 
Soon, the company expanded, working with Lucasfilm on two books: Dressing a Galaxy: The Costumes of Star Wars and Sculpting a Galaxy: Inside the Star Wars Model Shop, published in 2005 and 2006, respectively, in both trade and deluxe limited editions. "Those two books put us on the map in terms of studio relationships," Madden says, adding that from there, much collaboration with movie studios, production companies and directors soon followed.
"We began working with DreamWorks, Sony, 20th Century Fox, Lionsgate, Warner Bros., and many others," Goff says. Eventually, that work led to a reputation as "a publisher of high-end and complicated art projects with unique interactive elements" that the company works hard to maintain. "We continually try to push the envelope in terms of the kind of creativity and innovation that we can bring to our publishing," adds Goff.
From there, the company branched into sports and gaming, producing books with Blizzard Entertainment, the San Francisco Giants, The Dallas Cowboys, the Philadelphia Phillies, and others. In addition to the studios mentioned above, the company's licensors also include HBO, Disney Publishing Worldwide, WWE, Activision, Microsoft, and AMC. The company has also worked closely on books and projects with Guillermo del Toro, James Cameron, Quincy Jones, and Metallica.
Currently, Insight Editions continues to expand, deepening its relationships with studios, artists and authors, and expanding its core creative team in the process. "We're proud of the books we publish, but we're also extremely proud of the team we have built," says Goff. "Their passion for the material comes through in the final result." The company's international and export business has also "exploded" in the last few years. And, Goff stresses, "it has become just as much a priority is our domestic sales."
So now, 15 years after the company published the first book under the Insight Editions name, Goff notes, "We feel that we are in the right place and the right time in the market. There have been a lot of predictions about the decline of the physical book, and that may be true for some publishers. For our part, we are seeing growth year after year through our publishing philosophy, which is focused on physical formats that encourage reader interaction and tactile engagement."