HarperCollins
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| HarperCollins | |
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| Type | Subsidiary of News Corporation |
| Founded |  New York City (1817) |
| Headquarters | |
| Industry | Publishing |
| Revenue | >£500 million |
| Website | www.harpercollins.com |
HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company. The worldwide CEO of HarperCollins is Brian Murray.[1] The company publishes under many different imprints.
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[edit] History
Collins was a Scottish printing company founded by a Presbyterian schoolmaster, William Collins, in Glasgow in 1819, in partnership with Charles Chalmers, the younger brother of Thomas Chalmers, minister of Tron Church, Glasgow. The company had to overcome many early obstacles, and Charles Chalmers left the business in 1825. The company eventually found success in 1841 as a printer of Bibles, and in 1848 Collins's son Sir William Collins developed the firm as a publishing venture, specializing in religious and educational books. The company was renamed William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd. in 1868. [2]
Although the early emphasis of the company had been on religion and education, Collins also published more widely. In 1917, with Sir Godfrey Collins in charge, the firm started publishing fiction. William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd. published all but the first six of Agatha Christie's novels. Upon purchasing the rights to the works of C.S. Lewis, Fount was established as Collins's religion imprint.
Collins ultimately became a diverse and prolific publisher, publishing a wide range of titles, including many aimed at a juvenile audience. By the late 1970s, Wm Collins & Sons was also responsible for publishing the long-running American Children's Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series' in the United Kingdom. These were firstly published in a series of digest size hardbacks akin to their American style. Paperbacks (of a 'normal' rather than 'digest' size) soon followed from Collins' Armada Books imprint, although the series as published in England follow a different numbering system to the accepted American one. Collins's Armada Books imprint also published similar series, such as the Three Investigators, alongside such British stallwarts as Biggles, Billy Bunter and Paddington Bear, and such well-loved authors as Enid Blyton, Malcolm Saville, Diana Pullein-Thompson.
HarperCollins Children's Books has a long tradition in the industry, and has one of the best backlists in the business. This is largely due to legendary children's book editor Ursula Nordstrom, who was the director of Harper's Department of Books for Boys and Girls from 1940 to 1973. She personally brought out such classics of children's literature as Goodnight Moon, Where the Wild Things Are, The Giving Tree, Charlotte's Web, Beverly Cleary's series starring Ramona Quimby, Harold and the Purple Crayon, and scores more. [3] In 1998, Nordtrom's personal correspondence was brought out in Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom (illustrated by Maurice Sendak). The writer Charlotte Zolotow, who began her career as a stenographer to Nordstrom, became her protege, and went on to write more than 80 books of her own as well as to edit hundreds of others, including Nordstrom's own book, The Secret Language, and those of Paul Fleischman. Zolotow was later made the children's book department head, then went on to become the company's first female vice president. Finally, she had her own imprint, CZ Books.
Today, the HarperCollins children's division publishes bestsellers from Lemony Snicket, Neil Gaiman, and Jamie Lee Curtis.
In 1989, Collins was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Joined together with the New York-based publisher Harper & Row in 1987, they now trade under the name HarperCollins.
In 2003, Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins, published Edith Grossman's new translation of Cervantes's Don Quixote, to great acclaim.
Collins is still used as an imprint, chiefly for wildlife and natural history books (including the on-going New Naturalist series) and field guides, as well as English and bilingual dictionaries based on the Bank of English, a large corpus of contemporary English texts.
In 1999, News Corporation purchased the Hearst Book Group consisting of William Morrow & Company and Avon Books. [1]
Its web site home page describes it as "Home of William Morrow, Avon, Perennial, Rayo, Amistad, Caedmon Audio, Regan Books".
In 2007, the company published a new series of books entitled Stranger Than..., which include though-provoking works of non-fiction.
On January 16, 2008, George Michael, 44, inked a "no-holds-barred" multimillion-pound autobiography contract with HarperCollins, to be sold in book stores in autumn, 2008. Michael's manager Andy Stephens announced that: "George has promised HarperCollins a no-holds-barred biography, and it's certain to be just that. People aren't stupid, they're beginning to notice that the truth is more interesting than the stories the press come up with." The agreement is "one of the biggest ever concluded in UK publishing." [4]
New Entity
HarperCollins seeks to revolutionize the publishing industry with a new, experimental unit that would eliminate the traditional profit distributions to authors. The long-established author advances and bookseller returns has not proved to be very profitable to either the author or the publisher. Robert S. Miller will head the new entity with hopes to update the revenue system.[5][6]
Web Approach
In order to both boost book sales and effectively reach the interactive community, HarperCollins offers books for free online. The entire book is not available to view, but potential buyers are able to browse books before they purchase (much like a traditional bookstore)[7][8] There are some concerns among publishers with this approach because they feel that the online books could be exploited in a "Napster-type" way.[9] In addition, excerpts of books are also available to mobile phone users.[10]
HarperCollins has also broken through to the internet culture by teaming up with MySpace. HarperTeen is a page on MySpace that creates an interactive community for teen readers.[11]
[edit] Imprints
HarperCollins has over 30 book imprints, most of which are based in the United States. [2]
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[edit] See also
- COBUILD - a research facility set up by Collins in conjunction with the University of Birmingham.
- John Bartholomew and Son Ltd - Collins Bartholomew, cartographic division of HarperCollins.
[edit] References
- ^ Brian Murray takes over
- ^ Keir, David (1952). The House of Collins: The Story of a Scottish Family of Publishers from 1789 to the Present Day. Collins: London. ISBN B00005XH0X.
- ^ Marcus, Leonard S (editor) (1998). Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom HarperTrophy: New York. ISBN 0-06-446235-8
- ^ ukpress.google.com, George Michael tells all in memoirs
- ^ Rich, Motoko (2008-04-04). "New HarperCollins Unit to Try to Cut Writer Advances". New York Times. Retrieved on 2008-04-04.
- ^ Italie, Hillel (2008-04-03). "Hyperion publisher goes to HarperCollins". Associated Press. Retrieved on 2008-04-04.
- ^ HarperCollins (Finally) Offers Free Books Online
- ^ Pace, Andrew K. “Technically Speaking.” American Libraries 2006 April: 80.
- ^ Lowry, Tom. “Getting Out Of a Bind.” Business Week2006 April 10; 79.
- ^ HarperCollins Offers Books on the iPhone
- ^ MySpace and HarperCollins Hook Up in Hopes that Teens Still Read Books
[edit] External links
- HarperCollins Publishers India
- HarperCollins Publishers US
- HarperCollins Publishers UK
- Collins UK
- HarperCollinsChildrens US
- HarperCollins Publishers AUS
- HarperCollins Publishers CAN
- Zondervan
- Collinslanguage.com English dictionary and thesaurus (free online lookup)
- Collins English Dictionary electronic version of dictionary
