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. The worldwide CEO of HarperCollins is Brian Murray. The company publishes under many different
imprints, and publishes The
Collins English Dictionary.
History
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.
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. William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd. published all but the first six of
Agatha Christie's novels. 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 publisher, 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 Childrens'
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.
In 1989, Collins was bought by
Rupert Murdoch's
News Corporation.
Collins is still used as an
imprint, chiefly for
wildlife and
natural history books (including the on-going
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.
In 1999, News Corporation purchased the Hearst Book Group consisting of William Morrow & Company and
Avon Books.
In 2007, the company published a new series of books entitled
Stranger Than..., which includes thought-provoking works of non-fiction.
HarperCollins Children's BooksLegendary childrens' 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. 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.
HarperStudioHarperCollins 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 is headed by Robert S. Miller, previously the founding publisher of
Hyperion, the adult books division of the
Walt Disney Company.
Web ApproachIn 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. There are some concerns among publishers with this approach because they feel that the online books could be exploited in a "Napster-type" way. In addition, excerpts of books are also available to mobile phone users.
Notable authors and works
HarperCollins- George Michael's autobiography was published in 2008, the result of "one of the biggest [publishing agreements] ever concluded in UK publishing".
HarperCollins Tween/Children's Books- Tina Wells' Mackenzie Blue
EccoImprints
HarperCollins has over 30 book
imprints, most of which are based in the
United States.
- HarperBusiness Essentials
- HarperCollins Children's Audio
- HarperCollins Children's Books
- Harper Perennial Modern Classics
See also
