The company's name is derived from a combination of the firm's predecessors. Harper & Brothers, founded in 1817, merged with Row, Peterson & Company in 1962 to form Harper & Row, which was acquired by News Corp in 1987. The Scottish publishing company William Collins, Sons, founded in 1819, was acquired by News Corp in 1989 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 different imprints, including former independent publishing houses and new imprints. The company's worldwide CEO is Brian Murray.[2]
The earliest of the publishing firms that comprise HarperCollins was founded in 1817 by James Harper and his brother John, initially operating under the name J & J Harper. They were later joined by two other brothers, Joseph Wesley and Fletcher Harper, with the firm becoming Harper & Brothers in 1833.
In 1962, Harper & Brothers merged with Row, Peterson & Company to become Harper & Row. The firm acquired Thomas Y. Crowell Co. and J. 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 publisher Zondervan, including subsidiary Marshall Pickering.
William Collins, Sons was established in Glasgow in 1819 by Presbyterian schoolmaster William 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 of Godfrey Collins.
Rupert Murdoch's News 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 of William Morrow & Company and Avon Books, in 1999. These imprints are now published under the rubric of HarperCollins.[5] HarperCollins bought educational publisher Letts and Lonsdale in March 2010.[6]
In 2011, HarperCollins announced they had agreed to acquire the publisher Thomas 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 and Zondervan 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 of John Wiley & Son in Canada.[12]
In 2014, HarperCollins acquired Canadian romance publisher Harlequin Enterprises for C$455 million.[13]
In 2020, HarperCollins acquired the children's publishers Egmont Books UK, Egmont Poland and Schneiderbuch Germany from the Egmont Group.[15]
On 29 March 2021, HarperCollins announced that it would acquire HMH Books & Media, the trade publishing division of Houghton 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 publishers Pavilion Books.[19]
In 2022 HarperCollins acquired Cider Mill Press.[20]
Management history
Brian Murray,[21] the current CEO of HarperCollins, succeeded Jane 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.
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.[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 the price-fixing.[23]
US warehouse closings
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 with R.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]
Internet Archive lawsuit
In June 2020, HarperCollins was one of a group of publishers who sued the Internet Archive, arguing that its collection of e-books was denying authors and publishers revenue and accusing the library of "willful mass copyright infringement".[28]
Lindsay Lohan lawsuit
In September 2020, HarperCollins sued Lindsay Lohan for entering into a book deal and collecting a $350,000 advance for a tell-all memoir that never materialized.[29]
Anne Frank's betrayal
A 2022 book written by Rosemary Sullivan, with HarperCollins as main publisher, designated a Jewish notary as the most likely suspect in Anne 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 the United 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][bettersourceneeded] The picketing resumed as scheduled on 3 January 2023.[35][bettersourceneeded]
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]
Noted books
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 include Mark Twain, the Brontë sisters, and William Makepeace Thackeray. Authors published originally by Collins include H. G. Wells and Agatha Christie. HarperCollins also acquired the publishing rights to J. R. R. Tolkien's work in 1990 when Unwin 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 book imprints, 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 the Bank of English, a large corpus of contemporary English texts.
HarperCollins' imprints, including current and defunct imprints prior to various mergers, include:
Current
Adult
Amistad Press, primarily books of African-American interest, named for the storied ship La Amistad; launched as an independent imprint in 1986 by Charles 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 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)
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, and Amazon's use of excerpts ("teasers") for online book purchasers.[66]
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.[69]
HarperCollins formerly operated authonomy, 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 for peer 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 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.[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.
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.[74][75] HarperStudio folded in March 2010 after Miller left for Workman Publishing.[76]
HarperCollins India
HarperCollins Publishers India Pvt Ltd. is a wholly owned subsidiary of HarperCollins Worldwide. It came into being in 1992.
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.[77] 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".[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]
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.[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 with Macmillan 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]
Ebooks
In March 2011, HarperCollins announced it would distribute ebooks to libraries with DRM 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]
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.[88] 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 Arab 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]
What the (Bleep) Just Happened?
HarperCollins announced in January 2017 that they would discontinue selling copies of Monica Crowley's book What 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 to CNN's KFile, "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]
Random House is an imprint and publishing group of Penguin Random House. Founded in 1927 by businessmen Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer as an imprint of Modern Library, it quickly overtook Modern Library as the parent imprint. Over the following decades, a series of acquisitions made it into one of the largest publishers in the United States. In 2013, it was merged with Penguin Group to form Penguin Random House, which is owned by the Germany-based media conglomerate Bertelsmann. Penguin Random House uses its brand for Random House Publishing Group and Random House Children's Books, as well as several imprints.
Doubleday is an American publishing company. It was founded as the Doubleday & McClure Company in 1897. By 1947, it was the largest book publisher in the United States. It published the work of mostly U.S. authors under a number of imprints and distributed them through its own stores.
Penguin Group is a British trade book publisher and part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann. The new company was created by a merger that was finalised on 1 July 2013, with Bertelsmann initially owning 53% of the joint venture, and Pearson PLC initially owning the remaining 47%. Since 18 December 2019, Penguin Random House has been wholly owned by Bertelsmann.
Simon & Schuster LLC is an American publishing company owned by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924, by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. Along with Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins and Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster is considered one of the 'Big Five' English language publishers. As of 2017, Simon & Schuster was the third largest publisher in the United States, publishing 2,000 titles annually under 35 different imprints.
Macmillan Publishers is a British publishing company traditionally considered to be one of the "Big Five" English language publishers. Founded in London in 1843 by Scottish brothers Daniel and Alexander MacMillan, the firm soon established itself as a leading publisher in Britain. It published two of the best-known works of Victorian-era children's literature, Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book (1894).
Harper is an American publishing house, the flagship imprint of global publisher, HarperCollins, based in New York City. Founded in New York in 1817 by James Harper and his brother John, the company operated as J. & J. Harper until 1833, when it changed its name to Harper & Brothers, reflecting the inclusion of Joseph and Fletcher Harper. Harper began publishing Harper's Magazine, Harper's Weekly, and other periodicals beginning in the 1850s. From 1962 to 1990, the company was known as Harper & Row after its merger with Row, Peterson & Company. Harper & Row was purchased in 1987 by News Corporation and combined with William Collins, Sons, its United Kingdom counterpart, in 1990 to form HarperCollins, although the Harper name has been used in its place since 2007.
St. Martin's Press is a book publisher headquartered in Manhattan in New York City. It is headquartered in the Equitable Building. St. Martin's Press is considered one of the largest English-language publishers, bringing to the public some 700 titles a year under six imprints.
Ecco is a New York–based publishing imprint of HarperCollins. It was founded in 1971 by Daniel Halpern as an independent publishing company; Publishers Weekly described it as "one of America's best-known literary houses." In 1999 Ecco was acquired by HarperCollins, with Halpern remaining at the head. Since 2000, Ecco has published the yearly anthology The Best American Science Writing, edited by Jesse Cohen. In 2011, Ecco created two separate publishing lines, one "curated" by chef-author Anthony Bourdain and the other by novelist Dennis Lehane.
Thomas Nelson is a publishing firm that began in West Bow, Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1798, as the namesake of its founder. It is a subsidiary of HarperCollins, the publishing unit of News Corp. It describes itself as a "world leading publisher and provider of Christian content".
Harlequin Enterprises ULC is a publisher of romance, women's fiction and various other genres under multiple publishing imprints. Founded in Winnipeg, Canada, in 1949, from the 1960s, it grew into the largest publisher of romance fiction in the world.
Little, Brown and Company is an American publishing company founded in 1837 by Charles Coffin Little and James Brown in Boston. For close to two centuries, it has published fiction and nonfiction by American authors. Early lists featured Emily Dickinson's poetry and Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. Since 2006, Little, Brown and Company is a division of the Hachette Book Group.
Hachette Book Group (HBG) is a publishing company owned by Hachette Livre, the largest publishing company in France, and the third largest trade and educational publisher in the world. Hachette Livre is a wholly owned subsidiary of Lagardère Group. HBG was formed when Hachette Livre purchased the Time Warner Book Group from Time Warner on March 31, 2006. Its headquarters are located at 1290 Avenue of the Americas, Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Hachette is considered one of the "big five" publishing companies, along with Holtzbrinck/Macmillan, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster. In one year, HBG publishes approximately 1400+ adult books, 300 books for young readers, and 450 audiobook titles. In 2017, the company had 167 books on the New York Times bestseller list, 34 of which reached No. 1.
The Egmont Group is a Danish media corporation founded and rooted in Copenhagen, Denmark. The business area of Egmont has traditionally been magazine publishing, but has over the years evolved to comprise mass media generally.
ReganBooks was an American bestselling imprint or division of HarperCollins book publishing house, headed by editor and publisher Judith Regan, started in 1994 and ended in late 2006. During its existence, Regan was called, by LA Weekly, "the world's most successful publisher". The division reportedly earned $120 million a year. ReganBooks focused on celebrity authors and controversial topics, sometimes from recent tabloids.
Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. is an American independent book publishing company founded in 2006 and headquartered in New York City, with a satellite office in Brattleboro, Vermont.
Panther Books Ltd was a British publishing house especially active in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, specialising in paperback fiction.
Counterpoint LLC was a publishing company that Perseus Books Group launched in 2007. It was formed from the consolidation of three presses: Perseus' Counterpoint Press, Shoemaker & Hoard, and Soft Skull Press. The company published books under both the Counterpoint Press and Soft Skull Press imprints. Counterpoint also entered into an agreement for the production, marketing, and distribution of approximately eight Sierra Club book titles each year.
William Collins, Sons & Co., often referred to as Collins, was a Scottish printing and publishing company founded by a Presbyterian schoolmaster, William Collins, in Glasgow in 1819, in partnership with Charles Chalmers, the younger brother of Thomas Chalmers, the minister of Tron Church in Glasgow.
Penguin Random House Limited is a British-American multinational conglomerate publishing company formed on July 1, 2013, with the merger of Penguin Books and Random House. Penguin Books was originally founded in 1935 and Random House was founded in 1927. It has more than 300 publishing imprints. Along with Simon & Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins and Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Random House is considered one of the 'Big Five' English language publishers.
Open Road Integrated Media or ORIM is a digital media company in New York City that was created by Jane Friedman and Jeffrey Sharp in 2009 with a focus on publishing ebook editions of older works of literature and nonfiction. In addition to its ebook publishing business, Open Road Integrated Media is the parent company of book publisher Open Road Media and content brands Early Bird Books, The Lineup, The Archive, Murder & Mayhem, A Love So True, and The Portalist.
↑ "Christian Publishing". HarperCollins Corporate. HarperCollins. Archived from the original on 15 September 2015. Retrieved 24 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 from the original on 25 September 2015. Retrieved 24 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 from the original on 8 February 2014. Retrieved 18 January 2014.
↑ "About us". The Borough Press. Harper Collins. Archived from the original on 1 September 2018. Retrieved 1 September 2018. ... HarperFiction's literary fiction imprint, The Borough Press
↑ Bosman, Julie (27 February 2011). "A Limit on Lending E-Books". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 3 July 2021. Retrieved 8 March 2011.
↑ Kingsley, Patrick (6 March 2011). "Ebooks On Borrowed Time". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 27 September 2016. Retrieved 11 December 2016.
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US$1.985 billion (2021) [1] 
