William Schmitt started his publishing career in 1973 as an educational representative for WB Saunders, Ltd in the London, UK office, responsible for selling medical student textbooks and professional medical books for Saunders and college textbooks for Holt, Reinhart and Winston in the UK and European markets. After 9 months with the company he was offered a position as an acquisition editor for WB Saunders, handling professional titles for the international Saunders publishing list.

In 1977, Schmitt accepted a position as Acquisitions Editor for medicine with the startup New York office of Churchill Livingstone until 1984 when he left Churchill to join Appleton & Lange as Editor in Chief. After 7 years with A&L he returned to Churchill Livingstone, which was acquired by Harcourt, therefor rejoining WB Saunders and eventually Mosby. Subsequently the medical components of Harcourt were purchased by Elsevier so Schmitt worked for Elsevier until he retired in July 2016, a total of approximately 43 years in medical publishing. During that time he handled most areas of clinical medicine as well as developing medical student textbooks. One of the books of which he is most proud is Gray’s Anatomy for Students, which is now in its third edition and has become a standard textbook for medical students all over the world.