The company's name is derived from a combination of the firm's predecessors.Harper & Brothers, founded in 1817 in New York, merged with Row, Peterson & Company in 1962 to formHarper & Row, which was acquired by News Corp in 1987. TheScottish publishing companyWilliam Collins, Sons, founded in 1819 inGlasgow, was acquired by News Corp in 1987 and merged with Harper & Row to form HarperCollins. The logo for the firm combines the fire from Harper's torch and the water from Collins' fountain.
HarperCollins has publishing groups in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, India, and China. The company publishes differentimprints, including former independent publishing houses and new imprints. Brian Murray has served as the company's president and chief executive officer since 2008.[2]
The earliest of the publishing firms that comprise HarperCollins was founded in 1817 byJames Harper and his brother John, initially operating under the name J & J Harper. They were later joined by two other brothers, Joseph Wesley andFletcher Harper, with the firm becoming Harper & Brothers in 1833.
In 1962, Harper & Brothers merged with Row, Peterson & Company to becomeHarper & Row. The firm acquiredThomas Y. Crowell Co. andJ. B. Lippincott & Co. in the 1970s, with Crowell and the trade operations of Lippincott merged into Harper & Row in 1980. In 1988, Harper & Row purchased the religious publisherZondervan, including subsidiaryMarshall Pickering.
William Collins, Sons was established inGlasgow in 1819 byPresbyterian schoolmasterWilliam Collins. The firm's early emphasis was on religion and education, but diversified over time, making a significant move into fiction in 1917 under the leadership ofGodfrey Collins.
Rupert Murdoch'sNews Corporation acquired Harper & Row in 1987. News Corp had owned a 40% stake in Collins since 1981 and became the sole owner in 1989. News Corp merged the two publishers in 1989, combining the name as HarperCollins and creating a logo with a stylized depiction of flames atop waves derived from the torch logo for Harper & Row and the fountain logo for Collins.
News Corporation purchased the Hearst Book Group, consisting ofWilliam Morrow & Company andAvon Books, in 1999. These imprints are now published under the rubric of HarperCollins.[5] HarperCollins bought educational publisherLetts and Lonsdale in March 2010.[6]
In 2011, HarperCollins announced they had agreed to acquire the publisherThomas Nelson.[7] The purchase was completed on 11 July 2012, with an announcement that Thomas Nelson would operate independently given the position it has in Christian book publishing.[8] Both Thomas Nelson andZondervan were then organized as imprints, or "keystone publishing programs," under a new division, HarperCollins Christian Publishing.[9][10] Key roles in the reorganization were awarded to former Thomas Nelson executives.[11]
In 2012, HarperCollins acquired part of the trade operations ofJohn Wiley & Son in Canada.[12]
In 2014, HarperCollins acquired Canadian romance publisherHarlequin Enterprises for C$455 million.[13]
In 2020, HarperCollins acquired the children's publishers Egmont Books UK, Egmont Poland and Schneiderbuch Germany from theEgmont Group.[15]
On 29 March 2021, HarperCollins announced that it would acquire HMH Books & Media, the trade publishing division ofHoughton Mifflin Harcourt, for $349 million. The deal would allow HMH to pay down its debt and focus on digital education.[16] The deal was completed on 10 May.[17] As of 7 July 2021, HMH's adult books will be published as Mariner Books, while HMH's children's books will be published as Clarion Books.[18]
In 2021, HarperCollins acquired the British publisher Pavilion Books.[19]
In 2022 HarperCollins acquired Cider Mill Press.[20]
Brian Murray,[21] the current CEO of HarperCollins, succeededJane Friedman who was CEO 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.
In April 2012, the United States Department of Justice filedUnited States v. Apple Inc., namingApple, HarperCollins, and four other major publishers as defendants. The suit alleged that they conspired to fix prices fore-books, and weakenAmazon.com's position in the market, in violation ofantitrust law.[22]
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 theprice-fixing.[23]
On 5 November 2012, HarperCollins announced to employees privately and then later in the day publicly that it was closing its remaining two US warehouses, to merge shipping and warehousing operations withR. R. Donnelley in Indiana. The Scranton, Pennsylvania, warehouse closed in September 2013 and a Nashville, Tennessee, warehouse, under the name Thomas Nelson (which distributes the religious arm of HarperCollins/Zondervan Books), in the winter of 2013. Several office positions and departments continued to work for HarperCollins in Scranton, but in a new location.[24]
The Scranton warehouse closing eliminated about 200 jobs, and the Nashville warehouse closing eliminated up to 500 jobs; the exact number of distribution employees is unknown.[25]
HarperCollins previously closed two US warehouses, one in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, in 2011 and another in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 2012.[26] "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 toPublishers 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.[27]
In June 2020, HarperCollins was one of a group of publishers who sued theInternet Archive, arguing that its collection of e-books was denying authors and publishers revenue and accusing the library of "willful mass copyright infringement".[28]
In September 2020, HarperCollins suedLindsay Lohan for entering into a book deal and collecting a $350,000 advance for a tell-all memoir that never materialized.[29]
A 2022 book written byRosemary Sullivan, with HarperCollins as main publisher, designateda Jewish notary as the most likely suspect inAnne Frank's betrayal. The conclusion was challenged by experts. The notary's family members threatened a lawsuit and started a foundation. The Dutch publisher withdrew the book, but HarperCollins has not taken any definitive decision.[30]
On 10 November 2022, approximately 250 unionized workers at HarperCollins began an indefinite strike.[31][32] Local 2110 of theUnited Auto Workers (UAW) union includes people in design, marketing, publicity, and sales for the company. The UAW union made the decision to strike after drawn-out negotiations between it and HarperCollins, which resulted in members "working without a contract since April."[33] According to a spokesperson, HarperCollins "has agreed to a number of proposals that the UAW is seeking to include in a new contract" and "is disappointed an agreement has not been reached" but "will continue to negotiate in good faith."[31]
On 21 December 2022 the local put their in-person picketing on "pause" to give strikers an opportunity to spend time with their loved ones.[34][better source needed] The picketing resumed as scheduled on 3 January 2023.[35][better source needed]
After three months of negotiations, the union agreed to a new contract with HarperCollins on February 16, 2023.[36] Under the new terms, the annual starting pay of HarperCollins employees has increased from $45,000 to $47,500 upon ratification, and is set to rise to $50,000 by 2025. Additionally, full-time employees in the union will receive a lump sum payment of $1,500.[36] The contract also allows workers making less than $60,000 to file for two hours of overtime pay per week without approval from a manager, and puts measures in place to compensate junior-level staff for diversity and inclusion work which is typically unpaid in the industry.[37]
The workers returned to their duties on February 21.[37]
HarperCollins maintains the backlist of many of the books originally published by its many merged imprints, in addition to having picked up new authors since the merger. Authors published originally by Harper includeMark Twain, theBrontë sisters, andWilliam Makepeace Thackeray. Authors published originally by Collins includeH. G. Wells andAgatha Christie. HarperCollins also acquired the publishing rights toJ. R. R. Tolkien's work in 1990 whenUnwin Hyman was bought. Following is a list of some of the more noted books and series published by HarperCollins and their various imprints and merged publishing houses.
HarperCollins has more than 120 bookimprints, most of which are based in the United States.[42] Collins still exists as an imprint, chiefly for wildlife and natural history books, field guides, as well as for English and bilingual dictionaries based on theBank of English, a largecorpus of contemporary English texts.
HarperCollins' imprints, including current and defunct imprints prior to various mergers, include:
Amistad Press, primarily books of African-American interest, named for the storied shipLa Amistad; launched as an independent imprint in 1986 byCharles F. Harris (1934–2015), it merged with HarperCollins in 1999.[43][44][45]
HarperVoyager, formerly Voyager, HarperCollins's worldwide science-fiction and fantasy imprint, combining the UK imprint HarperCollins Science Fiction & Fantasy (which had inherited the sci-fi and fantasy list of Collins's Grafton Books and its predecessors (Granada,Panther), as well asJ. R. R. Tolkien's books from the acquisition ofGeorge Allen & Unwin) and the US imprint Eos (from the acquisition ofAvon Books, which incorporated the formerHarper Prism)
In 2008, HarperCollins launched a browsing feature on its website where customers can read selected excerpts from books before purchasing, on both desktop and mobile browsers.[66][67][68] This functionality gave the publisher's website the ability to compete with physical bookstores, in which customers can typically look at the book itself, andAmazon's use of excerpts ("teasers") for online book purchasers.[66]
At the beginning of October 2013, the company announced a partnership with online digital libraryScribd. 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.[69]
HarperCollins formerly operatedauthonomy, an online community of authors, from 2008 to 2015. The website offered an alternative to the traditional "slush pile" approach for handling unsolicited manuscripts sent to a publisher with little chance of being reviewed. Using authonomy, authors could submit their work forpeer review and ranking by other members; the five highest-ranked manuscripts each month would be read by HarperCollins editors for potential publication. The site was closed after authors "learned to game the system" to earn top-five rankings, and fewer authonomy titles were selected to be published.[70]
From 2009 to 2010, HarperCollins operatedBookArmy, a social networking site.
TheHarperCollins Speakers Bureau (also known as HCSB) is the first lecture agency to be created by a major publishing house.[71] It was launched in May 2005[71] as a division of HarperCollins to book paid speaking engagements for the authors HarperCollins, and its sister companies, publish. Andrea Rosen is the director.[72]
HarperAcademic is the academic marketing department of HarperCollins. HarperAcademic provides instructors with the latest in adult titles for course adoption at the high school and college level, as well as titles for first-year and other common read programs at academic institutions. They also attend several major academic conferences to showcase new titles for academic professionals.
HarperAcademic Calling, a podcast produced by the department, provides interviews with authors of noteworthy titles.
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 ofHyperion, the adult books division of theWalt Disney Company.[74][75] HarperStudio folded in March 2010 after Miller left forWorkman Publishing.[76]
If I Did It was a book written byO. J. Simpson about his alleged murder ofNicole Simpson, which was planned as a HarperCollins title, and which attracted considerable controversy and a legal battle over publication.
In August 2010, the company became embroiled in a legal battle with theBBC after a book it was due to publish, later identified as the forthcoming autobiography of racing driverBen Collins, revealed the identity ofThe Stig fromTop Gear.[77] In his blog,Top Gear executive producerAndy Wilman accused HarperCollins of "hoping to cash in" on the BBC'sintellectual property, describing the publishers as "a bunch of chancers".[78] On 1 September, 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.[79]
The company became embroiled in controversy in 1998 after it was revealed it blockedChris Patten's (the last British governor of Hong Kong) bookEast and West after a direct intervention by the then-CEO ofNews International,Rupert Murdoch.[80] 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.[81]
Murdoch's intervention caused both Proffitt's resignation from the company and outrage from the international media apart from affiliated companies. Chris Patten later published withMacmillan Publishing, initially in America, where it carried the logo "The book that Rupert Murdoch refused to publish".[82] 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.[83]
In March 2011, HarperCollins announced it would distributeebooks to libraries withDRM enabled to delete the item after being lent 26 times.[84][85] HarperCollins has drawn criticism of this plan, in particular its likening of ebooks, which are purely digital, to traditional paperback trade books, which wear over time.[86][87]
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.[88] A representative forCollins Bartholomew, a subsidiary of HarperCollins that specializes in maps, explained that including Israel would have been "unacceptable" to their customers in theArab states of the Persian Gulf and the omission was in line with "local preferences".[89] The company later apologized and destroyed all the books.[90]
HarperCollins announced in January 2017 that they would discontinue selling copies ofMonica Crowley's bookWhat the (Bleep) Just Happened?, due to allegations of plagiarism.[91] The 2012 book had lifted passages from a number of sources including columns, news articles and think tank reports.[91] HarperCollins said in a statement toCNN'sKFile, "The book which has reached the end of its natural sales cycle, will no longer be offered for purchase until such time as the author has the opportunity to source and revise the material."[91]
^"Christian Publishing".HarperCollins Corporate. HarperCollins.Archived from the original on 15 September 2015. Retrieved24 September 2015.
^Greenfield, Jeremy (5 September 2012)."Reorganization at HarperCollins Christian Publishing Leaves Mix of Zondervan and Thomas Nelson Execs in Charge".Digital Book World. F+W Media. Archived fromthe original on 25 September 2015. Retrieved24 September 2015.While the senior executive appointments announced today by HarperCollins in a statement come from both houses, the most important roles seem to have been reserved for former Thomas Nelson executives: the new chief financial officer, head of e-media, head of sales and head of communications, for instance, are all former Thomas Nelson executives.
^"4th Estate". HarperCollins. Archived fromthe original on 8 February 2014. Retrieved18 January 2014.
^"About us".The Borough Press. Harper Collins.Archived from the original on 1 September 2018. Retrieved1 September 2018.... HarperFiction's literary fiction imprint, The Borough Press
^Kingsley, Patrick (6 March 2011)."Ebooks On Borrowed Time".The Guardian. London.Archived from the original on 27 September 2016. Retrieved11 December 2016.
US$1.985 billion (2021)[1]
