About Us
Our Mission
New World Library is dedicated to publishing books and other media that inspire and challenge us to improve the quality of our lives and the world.
We are a socially and environmentally aware company. We recognize that we have an ethical responsibility to our readers, our authors, our staff members, and our planet.
We serve our readers by creating the finest publications possible on personal growth, creativity, spirituality, wellness, parenting, animals, and other areas of emerging importance. We serve our authors by working with them to produce and promote quality books that reach a wide audience. We serve New World Library employees with generous benefits, substantial profit sharing, and constant encouragement to pursue their most expansive dreams.
Whenever possible, we print our books with soy-based ink on 100 percent postconsumer-waste recycled paper. We power our Northern California office with solar energy, and we respectfully acknowledge that it is located on the ancestral lands of the Coast Miwok Indians. We also contribute to nonprofit organizations working to make the world a better place for us all.
Our History
In the kitchen of a small apartment in Oakland, California, in 1977, Marc Allen and Shakti Gawain started Whatever Publishing to put out a few books and booklets they had written. It was a shoestring operation, started with very little capital. Total sales in 1977 were $800.
One of its first books, Shakti’s Creative Visualization, became an international bestseller, with thirty foreign editions and more than six million copies sold in English. The company’s name changed in the mid-1980s to better reflect the quality of its developing list. Today New World Library generates eight-figure revenues, with fifteen employees and its own spacious building in Novato, California.
New World Library has been distributed to the book trade by Publishers Group West since 1979 and is their oldest distribution client. In the early 1990s, Shakti formed Nataraj Publishing, and Marc became sole owner as well as publisher of New World Library. In 1998, Shakti and Marc, still close friends, formed a new working partnership, and Nataraj Publishing became an imprint published by New World Library. Two other joint publishing ventures, with Amber-Allen Publishing and H J Kramer, have contributed to the company’s success as well, and in 2017, New World Library acquired H J Kramer outright. In 2001, New World Library began working with the Joseph Campbell Foundation to launch the Collected Works of Joseph Campbell series, which now comprises more than 20 books.
In 2015, New World Library launched the Eckhart Tolle Editions imprint, which publishes life-changing works, both old and new, that have been personally selected by Eckhart Tolle, author of the company’s all-time greatest bestseller, The Power of Now. The imprint’s titles include Parenting with Presence by Susan Stiffelman, Letting Go of Nothing by Peter Russell, Three Magic Words by U.S. Andersen, and The Adventure by Steve Taylor, among others.
New World Library has an active backlist of more than 600 titles and publishes approximately thirty-five new titles annually in print, ebook, and audio formats. Its bestselling authors include Eckhart Tolle, Joseph Campbell, Deepak Chopra, Dan Millman, Alice Walker, Richard Carlson, Mother Teresa, Alan Watts, Kent Nerburn, Valerie Ann Worwood, J. Krishnamurti, Joanna Macy, Bill Plotkin, Matthew Fox, Peter Russell, Regina Louise, Robert Moss, Sam Horn, Danielle Dulsky, Brad Warner, Natalie Goldberg, Lee Harris, Laura McKowen, Sam Bennett, Matthew Dicks, Marc Bekoff, Linda Kohanov, Ian Dunbar, SARK, Sharon Blackie, Dr. Nita Landry, and, of course, Shakti Gawain and Marc Allen.
Ever true to its roots, New World Library holds fast to the vision that originally inspired Marc and Shakti: personal and planetary transformation — to awaken both individual consciousness and global social potential by publishing inspirational and practical materials on spirituality, personal growth, and related areas.
“The best thing about the business, as far as I’m concerned,” Marc says, “is the large amount of mail and email we’ve received over the years from people who have been deeply affected by our publications. All I need to know is that we’ve made a positive impact on someone’s life — that makes it all worthwhile.”
