Hay House didn’t USED to be (allegedly) owned by Nazis…
I was an avid reader, and self help books were among my favorite. Working on myself was a hobby and much needed activity.
I noticed a lot of the books I’d read on my book shelf had Hay House as their publisher. My experience is many of the authors who profoundly changed my life with their authenticity, approachability and profound wisdom were Hay House authors and as time passed I met many of them in person.
I later learned of Hay House and its founder Louise Hay. I appreciated that she created a climate that all these wonderful human beings had a platform to express their wisdom and reach people like me.
I chose Balboa Press as a publisher to publish my own novel in 2016 because it was affiliated with Hay House. After Louise Hay and Wayne Dyer passed away, I continued to participate with Hay House in the form of a writer’s workshop that the CEO Reid Tracy facilitates. The workshop was helpful. I even started this blog because it was a suggestion of Reid Tracy in the workshop.
I have kept it going even though the COVID pandemic changed my plans from the writing and publishing track I thought at the time I was on, back to a 40 hour a week job. The blog became more a personal journal than about the book. My experiences and opinions of Hay House remain very positive although I connect with them less frequently.
Fast forward to today.
On December 12, 2023 Hay House was sold to a larger publishing company, Penguin Random House. The publishers I’ve known since childhood, Penguin and Random House had previously combined into one. Since I did know these and had a positive feeling toward them, my initial reaction was, “Great! My book is a Penguin Random House book!”
Recently, however, I decided to do some amateur investigation. What was this company now? When I published with Balboa Press, I did so because it was associated with Hay House and I knew Hay House was not associated with complicated geopolitics. That is why I liked Hay House. It was founded by Louise Hay and was about healing, nothing more. The existence of the vast numbers of people I’d met who either contributed to it or were healed by it reassured me it was a quality company.
However, I know when a company is sold it becomes something else. Not necessarily better or worse, just something else. I knew Balboa Press’s owner is Hay House. I knew Hay House’s new owner is Penguin Random House, a British-American Company.
So, is Penguin Random House owned? The answer turned out to be yes.
It is privately held by its Parent: Bertelsmann.
Bertelsmann is a very large private conglomerate in Gutersloh, Germany, founded in 1835. My initial reaction finding this out was… <gulp>
According to Wikipedia the publishing company was suspected of helping the Nazis during WW2, and claimed to be a Christian resistance to Nazism after the war was over. There is controversy over which is true. I don’t know what is true because I know nothing about the company. I don’t feel any pull to learn about it. I wasn’t the one who arranged this merger.
I decided to switch my book from Balboa Press to another publishing company, but realized that any company I move it to can end up bought as was this one. So right now, this second, I do not know what I am going to do with Eva’s Journey. I retain all of the rights to it. I am in the information gathering stage. I might move it to another fully vetted publisher, or another idea is to buy my own printing press for Eva’s Journey and future books. The former would be a more accessible path. The latter would be ideal but would be the harder path.
If anyone of my publishing friends have had similar experiences or have knowledge of what I speak of and ideas, I am happy to hear them. You can send me an email through this website. If the public figures I respect, and I know have published through Hay House like Marianne Williamson and Alan Cohen have thoughts of all of this, I would love to hear what they would have to say.
