HarperCollins

HarperCollins Publishers LLC
Parent company News Corp
Status Active
Founded 1989
Country of origin United States/United Kingdom
Headquarters location 195 Broadway
New York City
Distribution Worldwide
Imprints Numerous
Official website www.harpercollins.com

HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the world's largest publishing companies and, alongside Hachette, Holtzbrinck/Macmillan, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster, is part of the "Big Five" English-language publishing companies.[1] Headquartered in New York City, the company is a subsidiary of News Corp. The company name is a combination of Harper & Row—an American publishing company acquired in 1987, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers (founded 1817) and Row, Peterson & Company—and UK publishing company William Collins, Sons (founded 1819), acquired in 1990. The worldwide CEO of HarperCollins is Brian Murray.[2] HarperCollins has publishing groups in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and India. The company publishes many different imprints, both former independent publishing houses and new imprints.

History

The News Building, HarperCollins's UK headquarters in London

Collins

Main article: William Collins, Sons

Harper

Main article: Harper (publisher)

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 addition to the simplified and merged name, the logo for HarperCollins was derived from the torch logo for Harper and Row, and the fountain logo for Collins, which were combined into a stylized set of flames atop waves.

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]

HarperCollins bought educational publisher Letts and Lonsdale in March 2010.

In 2011, HarperCollins announced they had agreed to acquire the publisher Thomas Nelson.[4] The purchase was completed on July 11, 2012 with an announcement that Thomas Nelson would operate independently given the position it has in Christian book publishing.[5]

Management history

Jane Friedman was CEO for HarperCollins from 1997 to 2008. Notable management figures include Lisa Sharkey, current senior vice president and director of creative development and Barry Winkleman from 1989 to 1994.

United States v. Apple Inc.

In April 2012, the United States Department of Justice filed United States v. Apple Inc., naming Apple, HarperCollins, and four other major publishers as defendants. The suit alleged that they conspired to fix prices for e-books, and weaken Amazon.com's position in the market, in violation of antitrust law.[6]

In December 2013, a federal judge approved a settlement of the antitrust claims, in which HarperCollins and the other publishers paid into a fund that provided credits to customers who had overpaid for books due to the price-fixing.[7]

U.S. warehousing closings

It was announced to employees privately and then later in the day publicly on Monday, November 5, 2012 that HarperCollins is closing its remaining 2 U.S. warehouses, in order to merge shipping and warehousing operations with R.R. Donnelley in Indiana. The Scranton, PA warehouse will close in September 2013 and a Nashville, TN warehouse, under the name (D.B.A.) Thomas Nelson (which distributes the religious arm of HarperCollins/Zondervan Books), in winter of 2013. Several office positions and departments will continue to work for HarperCollins in Scranton, but in a new location.[8]

The Scranton warehouse closing will eliminate approximately 200 jobs, and the Nashville warehouse closing will eliminate up to 500 jobs (exact number of distribution employees is unknown)[9]

HarperCollins previously closed 2 U.S. warehouses, one in Williamsport, PA in 2011 and another in Grand Rapids, MI in 2012.[10] “We have taken a long-term, global view of our print distribution and are committed to offering the broadest possible reach for our authors," said HarperCollins Chief Executive Brian Murray, according to Publishers Weekly."We are retooling the traditional distribution model to ensure we can competitively offer the entire HarperCollins catalog to customers regardless of location.” Company officials attribute the closings and mergers to the rapidly growing demand for e-book formats and the decline in print purchasing.

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. Authors published originally by Harper include Mark Twain, the Brontë sisters and William Makepeace Thackeray. Authors published originally by Collins include H. G. Wells, Agatha Christie and J. R. R. Tolkien. This is a list of some of the more noted books, and series, published by HarperCollins and their various imprints and merged publishing houses.

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

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. They were the publishing home of Maurice Sendak, Shel Silverstein, and Margaret Wise Brown.[12] 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 that may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.

Imprints

HarperCollins has over 30 book imprints, most of which are based in the United States.[13] Collins still exists as an imprint, chiefly for wildlife and natural history books, field guides, as well as English and bilingual dictionaries based on the Bank of English, a large corpus of contemporary English texts.

On 8 February 2013 it was announced that some parts of the Collins non-fiction imprint would be merged with the HarperPress imprint to form the new William Collins imprint.[14]

HarperCollins imprints (current and defunct, including imprints that existed prior to various mergers), include:

Current

Adult

  • 4th Estate[15]
  • Amistad, primarily books of African American interest, named for the storied ship La Amistad
  • Anthony Bourdain Books
  • Avon
    • Avon Impulse (digital imprint)
    • Avon Inspire
    • Avon Red
    • Avon Romance
  • Bourbon Street Books
  • Broadside Books
  • Collins
  • Dey Street
  • Ecco
  • Harlequin Enterprises
    • Carina Press
    • Harlequin Teen
    • Harlequin Kimani Arabesque
    • Harlequin Kimani TRU
    • Harlequin Kimani Press
    • Harlequin Luna
    • HQN
    • Mira
    • Rogue Angel
    • Silhouette Special Releases
    • Spice
    • Worldwide Mystery
  • Harper
    • Harper Business
    • Harper Design
    • Harper Paperbacks
    • Harper Perennial, originally Perennial Library
      • Harper Perennial Modern Classics
    • HarperLuxe
    • HarperOne[16]
    • HarperVoyager, formerly Voyager, HarperCollins’s worldwide sf & fantasy imprint, combining the UK imprint HarperCollins Science Fiction & Fantasy (which had inherited the sf & fantasy list of Collins’s Grafton Books and its predecessors (Granada, Panther), as well as J. R. R. Tolkien’s books from the acquisition of George Allen & Unwin) and the US imprint Eos (from the acquisition of Avon Books, which incorporated the former Harper Prism)
    • HarperWave
  • Rayo
  • Igniter
  • It Books
  • Mischief (digital imprint)
  • William Morrow
    • Witness
    • William Morrow Paperbacks
    • Morrow Cookbooks, a highly respected series of cookbooks

Children

  • HarperCollins Children's Books
    • Harper Festival
    • HarperTeen[17]
    • HarperTeen Impulse (digital imprint)
    • HarperTrophy
    • Amistad
    • Balzer + Bray
    • Collins
    • Greenwillow Books, children's literature
    • Katherine Tegen Books
    • Rayo
    • Walden Pond Press

Christian

  • Thomas Nelson
    • Grupo Nelson
    • Nelson Books
    • Tommy Nelson
    • W Publishing Group
    • WestBow Press
  • Zondervan
    • Blink
    • Editorial Vida
    • Zonderkidz

Audio

  • Harper Audio
  • Caedmon, audiobooks
  • HarperCollins Children's Audio

Bureau

  • HarperCollins Speakers Bureau

Digital

  • HarperCollins e-Books

Defunct

  • Unwin Hyman (defunct, once known as Allen & Unwin, which is now an independent publisher)
  • Angus & Robertson
  • The Julie Andrews Collection
  • Avon A
  • Cliff Street Books
  • Collins Press
  • Collins Bartholomew, cartographic publisher
  • Collins GEM
  • Eos Books, science fiction/fantasy, formerly an Avon Books imprint
  • Flamingo
  • Fontana
  • Harper & Brothers
  • Harper & Row
  • Harper Perennial Modern Thought
  • Harper Prism, science fiction imprint (merged with Eos)
  • Harper San Francisco, with a focus on religious and spiritual books
  • Harper Torch
  • Harper Trophy, children's book imprint
  • Harper True
  • HarperCollins West
  • Marshall Pickering
  • Moonstone
  • New Naturalist
  • ReganBooks
  • Thorsons

Business strategy

2008 conference booth

Web approach

In order to both boost book sales and reach the online market, HarperCollins has created a browsing feature on its website, whereby customers can read selected excerpts from books before purchasing.[18][19] There are some concerns among publishers with this approach because they feel that the online books could be exploited by file-sharing.[20] In addition, excerpts of books are also available to mobile phone users.[21] 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.

At the beginning of October 2013, the company announced a partnership with online digital library Scribd. The official statement revealed that the "majority" of the HarperCollins US and HarperCollins Christian catalogs will be available in Scribd's subscription service. Chantal Restivo-Alessi, chief digital officer at HarperCollins, explained to the media that the deal represents the first time that the publisher has released such a large portion of its catalog.[22]

Speakers Bureau

The HarperCollins Speakers Bureau (also known as HCSB) is the first lecture agency to be created by a major publishing house.[23] It was launched in May 2005[23] as a division of HarperCollins to book paid speaking engagements for the authors HarperCollins, and its sister companies, publish. Andrea Rosen is the director.[24]

Some of the notable authors the HCSB represents include Carol Alt, Dennis Lehane, Gregory Maguire,[25] Danny Meyer, Mehmet Oz, Sidney Poitier, Ted Sorensen, and Kate White.

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.[26][27] HarperStudio folded in March 2010 after Miller left for Workman Publishing.[28]

HarperCollins India

HarperCollins India was started in 2003 as a joint venture between Living Media and HarperCollins. This combination makes HarperCollins India a major publisher in India. HarperCollins took full control of the venture at the end of 2012.[29]

Controversies

If I Did It

Main article: 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.[30] 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".[31] 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.[32]

East and West

The company became embroiled in controversy in 1998 after it was revealed it blocked Chris Patten's (the last British governor of Hong Kong) book East and West after a direct intervention by the then-CEO of News International, Rupert Murdoch.[33] It was later revealed by Stuart Proffitt, the editor who had worked on the book for HarperCollins, that this intervention was designed to appease the Chinese authorities- of whom the book was critical- as Murdoch intended to extend his business empire into China and did not wish to cause problems there by allowing the book to be published.[34] Murdoch's intervention caused both Proffitt's resignation from the company and outrage from international media outside of News International. Chris Patten later published with Macmillan Publishing, initially in America, where it carried the logo "The book that Rupert Murdoch refused to publish".[35] After a successful legal campaign against HarperCollins, Patten went on to publish the book in the UK in September 1998 after accepting a sum of £500,000 and receiving an apology from Rupert Murdoch.[36]

eBooks

In March 2011, HarperCollins announced it would distribute eBooks to libraries with DRM enabled to delete the item after being lent 26 times.[37][38] 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.[39][40]

Omission of Israel from an atlas

In December 2014, The Tablet reported that an atlas published for Middle East schools did not label Israel on a map of the Middle East.[41] A representative for Collins Bartholomew, a subsidiary of HarperCollins that specializes in maps, explained that including Israel would have been “unacceptable” to their customers in the Gulf and the omission was in line with “local preferences”.[42][43] The company later apologized and destroyed all the books.[44][45]

See also

References

  1. Neyfakh, Leon (June 4, 2008). "It's Official: Jane Friedman Out at HarperCollins, Her Deputy Up 'Effective Immediately'". The New York Observer. Retrieved 26 November 2010.
  2. "News Corporation Announces Plans To Acquire William Morrow & Company And Avon Books From The Hearst Corporation" (Press release). New York: News Corporation. June 17, 1999. Archived from the original on Dec 9, 2006. Retrieved August 6, 2012.
  3. "HarperCollins to Acquire Thomas Nelson". Publishers Weekly. October 31, 2011.
  4. Casey Francis (July 11, 2012). "HarperCollins Finalizes Acquisition of Thomas Nelson" (Press release). Thomas Nelson, Inc. Retrieved August 6, 2012.
  5. Mui, Ylan Q. and Hayley Tsukayama (April 11, 2012). "Justice Department sues Apple, publishers over e-book prices". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2014-06-01.
  6. Molina, Brett (March 25, 2014). "E-book price fixing settlements rolling out". USA Today. Retrieved 2014-06-01.
  7. "HarperCollins to close warehouses in deal with R.R. Donnelley".
  8. Getahn Ward (August 14, 2003). "HarperCollins Publishers to sell Nashville distribution center". The Tennesseean.
  9. Jim Milliot (May 12, 2011). "Harper, Donnelley in Wide Ranging Supply Chain Deal". Publishers Weekly.
  10. Cameron, Lucinda (5 October 2011). "Mumpreneur leads Collins English Dictionary entries". The Independent (London).
  11. Marcus, Leonard S (editor) (1998). Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom HarperTrophy: New York. ISBN 0-06-446235-8
  12. "Company Profile, HarperCollins Publishers". Retrieved 2010-01-24.
  13. Farrington, Joshua (8 February 2013). "HarperCollins merges non-fiction divisions". Bookseller. Retrieved 20 February 2013.
  14. "4th". HarperCollins. Retrieved 18 January 2014.
  15. Harperone.com
  16. Harperteen.com
  17. HarperCollins (Finally) Offers Free Books Online.
  18. Pace, Andrew K. “Technically Speaking.” American Libraries 2006 April: 80.
  19. Lowry, Tom. “Getting Out Of a Bind.” Business Week2006 April 10; 79.
  20. HarperCollins Offers Books on the iPhone.
  21. Anthony Ha (1 October 2013). "With HarperCollins Deal, Scribd Unveils Its Bid To Become The Netflix For Books". TechCrunch. AOL Inc. Retrieved 1 October 2013.
  22. 23.0 23.1 McGee, Celia. "A Way to Give Authors a Lucrative Second Platform." The New York Times, 4 June 2007. Retrieved 23 February 2009.
  23. Donadio, Rachel. "More Bang for the Book." The New York Times, 27 July 2008. Retrieved 23 February 2009.
  24. Nawotka, Edward. "As Speakers' Bureaus Grow, Booksellers Cast Wary Eye." Publishers' Weekly, 12 November 2007. Retrieved 23 February 2009.
  25. Rich, Motoko (2008-04-04). "New HarperCollins Unit to Try to Cut Writer Advances". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-04-04.
  26. Italie, Hillel (2008-04-03). "Hyperion publisher goes to HarperCollins". Associated Press. Archived from the original on 2008-04-08. Retrieved 2008-04-04.
  27. Kellogg, Carolyn (2010-04-02). "That was fast: say goodbye to Harper Studio". Los Angeles Times.
  28. HC takes full control of India arm
  29. "Top Gear boss lambasts Stig book plans". BBC Online. 27 August 2010. Retrieved 26 November 2010.
  30. "The Stig. He’s ours". Transmission. 2010-08-27. Retrieved 26 November 2010.
  31. "Stig court case: BBC loses battle over Ben Collins book". BBC Online. 1 September 2010. Retrieved 26 November 2010.
  32. "Rupert Murdoch Faces Authors' Revolt.". Transmission. 1 March 1998. Retrieved 16 January 2015.
  33. Lister, David (28 February 1998). "Bookworm who turned". The Independent (London). Retrieved 23 January 2012.
  34. "Leveson inquiry: Rupert Murdoch 'dropped Lord Patten's book to curry favour with Chinese'". The Daily Telegraph (London). 23 January 2012. Retrieved 23 January 2012.
  35. "Rupert Murdoch blocked my book, says Lord Patten". BBC News. 23 January 2012. Retrieved 23 January 2012.
  36. Bosman, Julie (2011-02-27). "A Limit on Lending E-Books". The New York Times.
  37. Kingsley, Patrick (2011-03-06). "Ebooks On Borrowed Time". The Guardian (London).
  38. Doctorow, Cory (2011-03-08). "Ebooks: durability is a feature, not a bug". The Guardian (London).
  39. Page, Benedicte (2011-03-01). "Fury over 'stupid' restrictions to library ebook loans". The Guardian (London).
  40. "Israel wiped off the map in Middle East atlases". The Jerusalem Post. 31 December 2014. Retrieved 31 December 2014.
  41. "Publisher sets off firestorm after omitting Israel from school atlases ‘to meet local preferences’". Rawstory.com. 31 December 2014. Retrieved 31 December 2014.
  42. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/01/02/harpercollins-omits-israel-from-maps-for-mideast-schools-citing-local-preferences/?tid=hp_mm&hpid=z3
  43. "Middle East atlas omitting Israel to be pulped following widespread anger". theguardian.com. 5 January 2015. Retrieved 5 January 2015.
  44. "HarperCollins apologises for 'offensive' omission of Israel from Atlasand promises to pulp all remaining copies". dailymail.co.uk. 1 January 2015. Retrieved 1 January 2015.

External links