HarperCollins

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, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide CEO of HarperCollins is Brian Murray.^[1] The senior vice president is Lisa Sharkey. The company publishes many different imprints, both former independent publishing houses and new imprints.

History

Collins

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. Collins Crime Club (1930–1994) published all but the first six of Agatha Christie's novels, as well as the British editions of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe books and many others from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. 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 company, 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 stalwarts as Biggles, Billy Bunter, and Paddington Bear, and such well-loved authors as Enid Blyton, Malcolm Saville, Diana Pullein-Thompson.

Harper

Marshall Pickering was bought by Harper and Row in 1988. Marshall Pickering itself was formed in 1981 from two long established Christian publishers. Marshall Morgan and Scott, a London based predominantly Baptist publishing house, which had acquired a number of publishing companies over the years, such as Bagsters (Bible publishers since 1794) and Oliphants. Pickering and Inglis was a long established Glasgow based publisher, publishing largely for the non conformist church in Scotland with many Brethren publications.

Mergers and acquisitions

In 1989, Collins was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, and the publisher was combined with Harper & Row, which NewsCorp had acquired two years earlier.

In 1999, News Corporation purchased the Hearst Book Group, consisting of William Morrow & Company and Avon Books. These imprints are now published under the rubric of HarperCollins^[3]

In 2011, HarperCollins acquired the publisher Thomas Nelson (pending).^[4]

Management history

Jane Friedman was CEO for HarperCollins from 1997 to 2008.

Web approach

In order to both boost book sales and reach the online market, HarperCollins offers a browsing feature on its website, whereby customers can read selected extracts from books before purchasing.^[5][6] There are some concerns among publishers with this approach because they feel that the online books could be exploited by file-sharing.^[7] In addition, excerpts of books are also available to mobile phone users.^[8] HarperCollins were first to market with an innovative approach to slushpile management with the introduction of the authonomy website. From 2009 to 2010, they operated Bookarmy, a social networking site.

Speakers Bureau

The HarperCollins Speakers Bureau (also known as HCSB) is the first lecture agency to be created by a major publishing house.^[9] It was launched in May 2005^[9] as a division of HarperCollins to book paid speaking engagements for the authors HarperCollins, and its sister companies, publish. Jamie Brickhouse is the director.^[10]

Some of the notable authors the HCSB represents include Carol Alt, Dennis Lehane, Gregory Maguire,^[11] Danny Meyer, Mehmet Oz, Sidney Poitier, Ted Sorensen, and Kate White.

Controversies

If I Did It

If I Did It was a book written by O.J. Simpson about his alleged murder of Nicole Simpson, which was planned as a HarperCollins title, and which attracted considerable controversy and a legal battle over publication.

Ben Collins

In August 2010, the company became embroiled in a legal battle with the BBC after a book it was due to publish, later identified as the forthcoming autobiography of racing driver Ben Collins, revealed the identity of The Stig from Top Gear.^[12] In his blog, Top Gear executive producer Andy Wilman accused HarperCollins of "hoping to cash in" on the BBC's intellectual property, describing the publishers as "a bunch of chancers."^[13] On September 1 the BBC's request for an injunction preventing the book from being published was turned down, effectively confirming the book's revelation that "The Stig" was indeed Collins.^[14]

eBooks

In March 2011, HarperCollins announced it would distribute eBooks to libraries with DRM enabled to delete the item after being lent 26 times.^[15][16] HarperCollins has drawn criticism of this plan, in particular its likening eBooks, which are purely digital, to traditional paperback trade books, which wear over time.^[17][18]

Harper Children's Books

Children's book editor Ursula Nordstrom was the director of Harper's Department of Books for Boys and Girls from 1940 to 1973, overseeing the publication of classics such as Goodnight Moon, Where the Wild Things Are, The Giving Tree, Charlotte's Web, Beverly Cleary's series starring Ramona Quimby, and Harold and the Purple Crayon.^[19] In 1998, Nordstrom's personal correspondence was published as Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom (illustrated by Maurice Sendak), edited by Charlotte Zolotow. Zolotow began her career as a stenographer to Nordstrom, became her protege, and went on to write more than 80 books and edit hundreds of others, including Nordstrom's The Secret Language and the works of Paul Fleischman. Zolotow later became head of the Children's Books Department, and went on to become the company's first female Vice-President.

The Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis, while not originally published by a merged imprint of HarperCollins, were acquired by the publisher.

HarperCollins has published the following notable children's books:

This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.

• the I Can Read! series for beginning readers, including the Amelia Bedelia (Peggy Parish), Frog and Toad (Arnold Lobel) and Little Bear (Else Holmelund Minarik and Maurice Sendak) books
• the Warriors series
• A Series of Unfortunate Events, Lemony Snicket
• A Taste of Blackberries, Doris Buchanan Smith (1973)
• Skulduggery Pleasant series, Derek Landy
• Bart Simpson's Guide to Life (1993)
• Love That Dog, Sharon Creech (2001)
• The Giving Tree, Shel Silverstein (1964)
• Where the Sidewalk Ends (book), Shel Silverstein (1974)
• The Saga of Darren Shan, Darren Shan (2000-2004)
  • Cirque du Freak manga series, Darren Shan and Takahiro Arai (2006-2009)
• The Dangerous Book for Boys, Conn and Hal Iggulden (2006)
• Sabriel, Garth Nix (1995)
• I Am Number Four, Pittacus Lore (pseudonym of James Frey and Jobie Hughes) (2010)
• The Power of Six (sequel to I Am Number Four), Pittacus Lore (pseudonym of James Frey and Jobie Hughes) (2011)
• A Barrel of Laughs, a Vale of Tears, Jules Feiffer (1995)
• Mister God, This Is Anna, Fynn (pseudonym of Sydney Hopkins) (1974)
• the Little House on the Prairie series, Laura Ingalls Wilder (1932-2006)
• The Wolves in the Walls, Neal Gaiman and Dave McKean (2003)
• Monster, Walter Dean Myers (1999)
• Coraline, Neal Gaiman and Dave McKean (2002)
• the Pretty Little Liars series, by Sara Shepard (2007-present)

Notable books

HarperCollins maintains the backlist of many of the books originally published by their many merged imprints, in addition to having picked up new authors since the merger. This is a list of some of the more noted books, and series, published by HarperColllins and their various imprints and merged publishing houses.

This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.

• The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm (1956)
• Master and Commander, Patrick O'Brian (1970) (adapted into the 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World)
• the Leaphorn and Chee books, Tony Hillerman (1970-2006)
• Collins English Dictionary (1979), a major dictionary^[20]
• Sharpe series, Bernard Cornwell (1981-2006)
• Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo, Hayden Herrera (1983), adapted into the 2002 film Frida
• Weaveworld, Clive Barker (1987)
• the Paladin Poetry Series (1987-1993)
• Of Gravity & Angels Jane Hirshfield (1988)
• The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho, (1988) (first published in Portuguese as O Alquimista, 1988)
• Take Back Plenty, Colin Greenland (1990)
• The Language of the Genes, Steve Jones (1993)
• The Gifts of the Body, Rebecca Brown (1994)
• Microserfs, Douglas Coupland (1995)
• One of the Guys, by Robert Clark Young (1999)
• Shuka Saptati: Seventy tales of the Parrot a new translation from the Sanskrit by A. N. D. Haksar (2000)
• First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers, Loung Ung (2000)
• Bel Canto, Ann Patchett (2001)
• A Theory of Relativity, Jacquelyn Mitchard (2001)
• recent volumes in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett (books from 2001 to present)
• American Gods Neal Gaiman (2001)
• Quicksilver, Neal Stephenson (2003)
• Don Quixote, a new translation by Edith Grossman (2003, Ecco)
• Acquainted with the Night, Christopher Dewdney (2004)
• Darkhouse, Alex Barclay (2005)
• Anansi Boys, Neal Gaiman (2005)
• The Hot Kid, Elmore Leonard (2005)
• Freaky Green Eyes, by Joyce Carol Oates (2006)
• Next, Michael Crichton (2006)
• The Children of Húrin, J.R.R. Tolkien (posthumous, compiled by Christopher Tolkien) (2007)
• Loving Natalee: A Mother's Testament of Hope and Faith, Beth Holloway (2007) (about Natalee Holloway)
• The Raw Shark Texts, Steven Hall (2007)
• The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, Jeff Sharlet (2008)
• Going Rogue: An American Life, Sarah Palin (2009)
• The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, J.R.R. Tolkien (2009) (copublished by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• Pirate Latitudes, Michael Crichton (2009) (posthumous publication)
• Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel (2009)
• Shattered: The True Story of a Mother's Love, a Husband's Betrayal, and a Cold-Blooded Texas Murder, Kathryn Casey (2010)
• Micro, Michael Crichton (2011) (posthumous publication)

Imprints

HarperCollins has over 30 book imprints, most of which are based in the United States.^[21] Collins still exists as an imprint, chiefly for wildlife and natural history books, including the 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.

HarperCollins imprints, both current, and defunct as part of their merger history, include:

HarperStudio

HarperCollins announced HarperStudio in 2008 as a "new, experimental unit... that will 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. The approach HarperStudio is now taking is to offer little or no advance, but instead to split the profit 50% (rather than the industry standard 15%), with the author." The division was headed by Bob Miller, previously the founding publisher of Hyperion, the adult books division of the Walt Disney Company.^[24][25] HarperStudio folded in March 2010 after Miller left for Workman Publishing.^[26]

See also

• COBUILD – a research facility set up by Collins in conjunction with the University of Birmingham.
• Harper's Magazine – a separately owned magazine, although begun by the original Harper & Brothers.
• The Big Six publishing companies:
  • Hachette, Holtzbrinck/Macmillan, Penguin Putnam, Random House and Simon & Schuster^[27]
• List of largest UK book publishers

References

External links

• HarperCollins Publishers India
• HarperCollins Publishers US
• HarperCollins Speakers Bureau
• HarperCollins Publishers UK
• Collins UK
• HarperCollinsChildrens US
• HarperCollins Publishers AUS
• HarperCollins Publishers CAN
• Zondervan
• Collinslanguage.com English dictionary and thesaurus (free online lookup)
• Times World Atlases official website published by Collins Geo
• Fontana Modern Masters a groundbreaking series of pocket guides on eminent writers, philosophers and other thinkers, published by Collins under its paperback imprint, Fontana Books, in the 1970s