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, itself the result of an earlier merger of
Harper & Brothers and Row,
Peterson & 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 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. 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.
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 is headed by Robert S. Miller, previously the founding
publisher of
Hyperion, the adult books
division of the
Walt Disney
Company.
Web Approach
In 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. HarperCollins were first to market
with an innovative approach to
slushpile
management with the introduction of the
authonomy website.
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
Ecco
Imprints
HarperCollins has over 30 book imprints, most of which are based in the United States
. [34159]
- HarperAudio
- HarperCollins
- HarperCollins e-Books
- HarperElement
- HarperEntertainment
- HarperLuxe
- HarperOne
- HarperTeen
- HarperTorch
- HarperTrophy
- HarperTrue
- HarperSanFrancisco
- HarperSport
- HarperVoyager
- Julie Andrews Collection
- Katherine Tegen Books
- Morrow Cookbooks
- Rayo
- Voyager
- Walden Pond Press
- William Morrow
- Zondervan
See also
References
- Brian Murray takes over
- Keir, David (1952). The House of Collins: The Story of a
Scottish Family of Publishers from 1789 to the Present Day.
Collins: London. ISBN B00005XH0X.
- http://www.newscorp.com/news/news_077.html
- Marcus, Leonard S (editor) (1998). Dear Genius: The Letters
of Ursula Nordstrom HarperTrophy: New York. ISBN
0-06-446235-8
- HarperCollins (Finally) Offers Free Books
Online.
- Pace, Andrew K. “Technically Speaking.” American Libraries 2006
April: 80.
- Lowry, Tom. “Getting Out Of a Bind.” Business Week2006 April
10; 79.
- HarperCollins Offers Books on the iPhone.
- ukpress.google.com, George Michael tells all in
memoirs.
External links
.
Wikis
Quiz
Facts
Map
Search
