The story
Founded by Dave Eggers in 1998.1
McSweeney's distributor was Publishers Group West (PGW) from 2002 until the end of 2006, when its parent company, Advanced Marketing Services, filed for bankruptcy. At the time of the filing, PGW owed McSweeney's about $600,000. To recover the funds, McSweeney's accepted a deal from the publishing group and distributor, Perseus Books Group, that offered payment of 70 cents on the dollar owed by PGW. In June 2007, McSweeney's held a successful sale and eBay auction to help make up the difference.
Since 2013, McSweeney's archives have been held in the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas. They include material from the company's founding and early history.
From 2013 to 2022, Brian Christian served as Director of Technology at McSweeney's, overseeing the development of the company's digital infrastructure and the successful launch of a new version of McSweeney's Internet Tendency in 2016 and its first audio issue, in collaboration with Radiotopia, in 2021.
In October 2014, Dave Eggers announced that McSweeney's would become a nonprofit publishing house and asked readers for donations for several projects. Eggers cited declining sales and more fundraising opportunities as the reasons for McSweeney's long-discussed change.
In 2015, McSweeney's expanded into brand copywriting, working in partnership with marketers at Converse, Warby Parker, and Airbnb.
In 2019, McSweeney's began publishing Illustoria magazine, founded by Joanne Meiyi Chan.
Company name
In 2004, Eggers said that when he was a child his family received letters from someone named Timothy McSweeney, who claimed to be a relative of his mother. The letters arrived as a result of the coincidence that his grandfather, who delivered Timothy at birth, and the family who adopted Timothy had the same last name: McSweeney.
From Wikipedia’s article on McSweeney's, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4