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American publishing house

McSweeney's Publishing is an American non profit publishing house founded by Dave Eggers in 1998 and headquartered in San Francisco. The executive director is Amanda Uhle. Initially publishing the literary journal Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, the company has moved to novels, books of poetry, and other periodicals.

Advanced Marketing Services was the parent company of McSweeney's distributor Publishers Group West (PGW) from 2002 until they declared bankruptcy in 2006. At the time of the filing, PGW owed McSweeney's about $600,000. McSweeney's eventually accepted an offer from Perseus Books Group to take over distribution in a deal that saw the publication paid 70% of the money owed by PGW. In June 2007, McSweeney's held a successful sale and eBay auction which helped make up the difference. As of 2013, the company's archives, including rare material from its founding and its early history, are held in the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas. In October 2014, Dave Eggers announced that McSweeney's would become a nonprofit publisher and began asking for donations for several projects on its website. Eggers cited declining sales and increased opportunities for raising funds as reasons for McSweeney's long discussed change to a nonprofit publishing house. As of 2015, McSweeney's expanded its operations into copywriting partnerships with Warby Parker and Airbnb. In 2019, McSweeney's began publishing Illustoria magazine, founded by Joanne Meiyi Chan.

In 2004, Eggers said that when he was a child his family received letters addressed from someone named Timothy McSweeney, who claimed to be a relative of his mother. Eggers now claims that the real McSweeney is in care for mental illness, and his letters arrived as a result of confusion over the fact that Eggers' grandfather, who delivered Timothy at birth, and a McSweeney family, who adopted him, had the same name.

In addition to a book list of approximately ten titles a year, McSweeney's also publishes the quarterly literary journal, Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, the daily updated humor site McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and Illustoria, an art and storytelling magazine for six to 11 year olds. The bimonthly magazine The Believer, the quarterly food journal Lucky Peach, and the sports journal Grantland Quarterly, in association with sports and pop culture website Grantland, were all established and incubated by McSweeney's. A quarterly DVD magazine, Wholphin, was decommissioned in 2012. The publishing house also runs additional imprints occasionally, including McSweeney's McMullens, a children's book department; McSweeney's Poetry Series; and the Collins Library, which reprints unusual titles. The Organist, a podcast produced by the editors of The Believer and KCRW, launched in 2012.

Dozens of emerging writers have been involved with McSweeney's, including Rebecca Curtis, Paul Legault, Philipp Meyer, and Wells Tower. Its contributors include Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Michael Chabon, Stephen King, David Foster Wallace, George Saunders, Michael Ian Black, Nick Hornby, Joyce Carol Oates, Hilton Als, and Rachel Z. Arndt. The house has also published the work of musicians, critics and artists including David Byrne and Beck. The band One Ring Zero gained popularity by performing at early McSweeney's events in New York and solicited lyric writing assistance from McSweeney's contributors for the 2004 album, As Smart As We Are. McSweeney's was also the subject of the They Might Be Giants song "The Ballad of Timothy McSweeney."

McSweeney's was named by Fast Company as the country's seventh most innovative media company in 2012. McSweeney's literary journal is a three time winner and eight time finalist for the National Magazine Award for Fiction. In contrast, in 2001, the New York Times noted "The McSweeneyites may be the current emperors of cool, but they're starting to need some new clothes." In 2019, Vida named McSweeney's Quarterly literary journal as the magazine publishing the highest percentage of women's and trans voices—71%—compared to their magazine peers. In 2021, Axios reported that readership tripled across its web and print publications.