When we launched The Experiment in early 2009, we explained our name with this thought: Because every book is a test of new ideas. We’re committed to publishing a wide range of nonfiction as well as select children’s storybooks with a teaching mission. Many of our books are highly practical, others are straightforwardly narrative—and some ingeniously combine practical information with narrative gusto.
Many of our books address an urgent need for information, are by authors with proprietary knowledge, and/or help readers embark on personal or social change. Others are just plain fun—or entertain as they inform. We prioritize editorial excellence and distinctive packaging ideally suited to our books’ content. And we champion discoverability, with a mindset that there’s always more we can do to find readers for the books we publish.
As of January 1, 2024, our books are being sold and distributed everywhere around the world (except Canada) by the world’s largest and oldest employee-owned publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, where our fellow client publishers include New Directions, Thames & Hudson, Abbeville Press, Harvard University Press, and Yale University Press.
We’ve been thrilled to see our authors and their books garner a wide range of attention and accolades.
Most notably, Forks Over Knives: The Plant-Based Way to Health became our first #1 New York Times bestseller! Its sequel, Forks Over Knives—The Cookbook, is also a New York Times bestseller, and has 900,000 copies in print. Both tie-ins to the 2011 feature documentary also called Forks Over Knives, these two books are helping to inspire and guide hundreds of thousands of people as they seek out the many benefits of eating a whole-foods, plant-based diet. Forks Over Knives has even been the subject of a question on the television show Jeopardy!
Many other books we’ve published have also garnered major national attention, accolades, and bestseller status:
- Adam Rutherford’s A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived is one of five National Book Critics Circle Award finalists for nonfiction, for 2017.
- In 2019, The University of Maryland selected Demagoguery and Democracy by Patricia Roberts-Miller as their First Year Book for students.
- Jennifer Teege, coauthor of My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me, was featured in People magazine, and her book is a New York Times bestseller. In 2017 the University of Houston—Downtown selected the book as its Freshman Conversation book.
- Tristan Gooley’s How to Read Water is a New York Times bestseller.
- Dear Oliver is a Main Selection of the Library of Science Book Club and one of The Telegraph’s 10 essential new books to read in 2024.
- Let’s Talk About Aging Parents is a Wall Street Journal Best Book on Aging 2024, an Instant #2 Globe & Mail Bestseller, and a 2024 Foreword INDIES Gold Winner.
- Nineteen Reservoirs is a Washington Post Best Nonfiction Book of 2022 and an Indie Bestseller.
- Vagabonds is a New Yorker Best Book of 2024, shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2023, a Times (UK) Book of the Year, and a 2024 Foreword INDIES Gold Winner.
- More than 1.1 million copies are in print of Emma Farrarons The Mindfulness Coloring Book and its sequels.
- The New York Times has featured or reviewed many of our books, including Adam Rutherford’s A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived (here) and Humanimal (here), the My Big Wimmelbook series (here), Anna Borges’s The More or Less Definitive Guide to Self-Care (here), iina’s Sushi Modoki (here), Ian Brown’s Sixty (here), Lucy Hone’s Resilient Grieving (here), and Ken Mogi’s Awakening Your Ikigai (here), Laura Jean Baker’s The Motherhood Affidavits (here), Carol Clements’ Better Balance for Life (here), and Nadine Horn and Jörg Mayer’s VBQ (here).
- The Wall Street Journal has also reviewed many of our books, including the My Big Wimmelbook series (here), Tobias Hürter‘s Too Big for a Single Mind (here), Ian Wright’s Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds (here), Tristan Gooley’s The Nature Instinct (here), Daniel Hume’s Fire Making (here), Peter Hellman’s In Vino Duplicitas (here); Adam Rutherford’s A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived (here); Ian Brown’s Sixty (here); Tristan Gooley’s The Natural Navigator: The Rediscovered Art of Letting Nature Be Your Guide (here), The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs (here), How to Read Water (here), How to Read Nature (here); and Peter Popham’s The Lady and the Peacock: The Life of Aung San Suu Kyi (here).
- The Wall Street Journal named Moimoi—Look at Me! as the first of its “Best 20 Children’s Books of the Last 20 Years.”
- Jessica Wapner’s The Philadelphia Chromosome was named by The Wall Street Journal as one of its 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2013.
- The Blink of an Eye author Rikke Schmidt Kjærgaard was interviewed for O, the Oprah Magazine on her near-fatal illness and journey back to health.
- NPR has featured a number of our authors on its weekly programs, including author Bill Turnbull to discuss Confessions of a Bad Beekeeper (here), and Adam Rutherford to discuss Humanimal (here).
- The TODAY Show has featured both Tristan Gooley and Tal Ben-Shahar (here) on the program to discuss their books.
- Plant-Based India is a 2023 James Beard Foundation Book Award Nominee, a New York Times Best Cookbook of 2022, a WBUR/Here and Now Best Cookbook of the Year, a Food Network Best Vegan Cookbook of 2022, a Forks Over Knives Favorite Plant-Based Book of 2022, an Amazon Editors’ Picks: Best Cookbook, a 2022 Foreword INDIES Finalist, and was featured in a Jeopardy! question.
- Cooking Light magazine named Vedge its #1 Cookbook of the Year for 2013. Vedge was also named one of the top 10 cookbooks of 2013 by Entertainment Weekly, one of the Best Cookbooks of the Year by Yoga Journal, one of the Oregonian’s five best vegan cookbooks, and by the Washington Post as a top vegetarian cookbook of the year.
- VegNews named The Taco Cleanse its Cookbook of the Year for 2016.
- KPBX, Spokane’s NPR station, broadcast Eileen Garvin’s How to Be a Sister: A Love Story with a Twist of Autism, read by the author in its entirety, over the course of one month.
- Polar Vortex is an American Library Association 2024 Top Ten Best Graphic Novel for Adults, a New York Public Library 2024 Best New Comics for Adults, a Hollywood Reporter Best Comics of 2024, the Winner of the LDComics Rosalind B. Penfold Prize, and short-listed for the Myriad First Graphic Novel Competition.
We’ve published more than five hundred and forty books since the fall of 2009, when our first books began to make their way out into the world, roughly half of which have been reprinted at least once.
We hope that you will want to read, sell, buy, review, feature, blog about, cook from, give as a gift, license, translate, or otherwise enjoy our books!