Orbit Books was founded in 1974 as part of the Macdonald Futura publishing company.

In 1992, its parent company was bought by Little, Brown & Co., at that stage part of the Time Warner Book Group.

In 1997, Orbit acquired the Legend imprint from Random House.

[1] In 2006, Orbit's parent company Little, Brown was sold by Time Warner to the French publishing group Hachette Livre.

In 2009 Orbit expanded to France, used by the publisher Calman Levy.