HarperCollins is one of the world's largest publishing companies. Headquartered in New York City, the company is a subsidiary of News Corporation. 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.^[1] 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[link]

HarperCollins UK headquarters in Hammersmith, London

Collins[link]

Harper[link]

Mergers and acquisitions[link]

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 where 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.^[2]

In 2011, HarperCollins acquired the publisher Thomas Nelson (pending).^[3]

Management history[link]

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.

Notable books[link]

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 HarperColllins and their various imprints and merged publishing houses.

• 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^[4]
• 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 Neil Gaiman (2001)
• Boonville, Robert Mailer Anderson (2003 reprint)
• 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, Neil Gaiman (2005)
• The Hot Kid, Elmore Leonard (2005)
• Freaky Green Eyes, by Joyce Carol Oates (2006)
• Next, Michael Crichton (2006)
• Mister B. Gone, Clive Barker (Harper) (2007)
• 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)
• Solo, Rana Dasgupta (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)
• The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, Gayle Tzemach Lemmon (2011)

Harper Children's Books[link]

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.^[5] 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:

• 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)
• Surviving the Applewhites, Stephanie S. Tolan (2002)
• Ruby Redfort (series), Lauren Child (2011)
• Divergent, Veronica Roth (2011)

Imprints[link]

HarperCollins has over 30 book imprints, most of which are based in the United States.^[6] 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.

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

Business strategy[link]

Web approach[link]

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 extracts from books before purchasing.^[9][10] There are some concerns among publishers with this approach because they feel that the online books could be exploited by file-sharing.^[11] In addition, excerpts of books are also available to mobile phone users.^[12] 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[link]

The HarperCollins Speakers Bureau (also known as HCSB) is the first lecture agency to be created by a major publishing house.^[13] It was launched in May 2005^[13] as a division of HarperCollins to book paid speaking engagements for the authors HarperCollins, and its sister companies, publish. Jamie Brickhouse is the director.^[14]

Some of the notable authors the HCSB represents include Carol Alt, Dennis Lehane, Gregory Maguire,^[15] Danny Meyer, Mehmet Oz, Sidney Poitier, Ted Sorensen, and Kate White.

HarperStudio[link]

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.^[16][17] HarperStudio folded in March 2010 after Miller left for Workman Publishing.^[18]

Controversies[link]

If I Did It[link]

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[link]

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.^[19] 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."^[20] 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.^[21]

East and West[link]

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^[22]. 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.^[23]. 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" ^[24]. 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. ^[25]

eBooks[link]

In March 2011, HarperCollins announced it would distribute eBooks to libraries with DRM enabled to delete the item after being lent 26 times.^[26][27] 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.^[28][29]

See also[link]

Children's literature portal

• 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:
  • HarperCollins, Hachette, Holtzbrinck/Macmillan, Penguin Putnam, Random House and Simon & Schuster^[30]
• List of largest UK book publishers

References[link]

External links[link]

• HarperCollins Publishers India
• HarperCollins Publishers US
• HarperCollins Speakers Bureau
• HarperCollins Publishers UK
• Collins UK
• HarperCollinsChildrens US
• HarperCollins Publishers AUS
• HarperCollins Publishers CAN
• Zondervan
• Collins English Dictionary online Collins 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