Harper Publication

[Monica Okane]

HarperCollins Publishers LLC is an Anglo-American publishing company that is considered to be one of the "Big Five" English-language publishers, along with Penguin Random House, Hachette, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster. HarperCollins is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Corp.

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 NewsCorp in 1987. The Scottish publishing company William Collins, Sons, founded in 1819, was acquired by NewsCorp 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.

Harper & Brothers originated several notable magazine publications in the nineteenth century that would later be sold or discontinued, including Harper's Magazine, Harper's Weekly, Harper's Bazaar, and Harper's Young People.

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.

The Collins Crime Club imprint published many works in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, including novels by Agatha Christie and Rex Stout. The religious imprint Fount would be home to C. S. Lewis. Collins would become the British Commonwealth publisher for a number of popular American juvenile series and authors, including the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and Dr. Seuss.

Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp acquired Harper & Row in 1987. NewsCorp had owned a 40% stake in Collins since 1981 and became the sole owner in 1989. NewsCorp 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]

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]

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.

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]

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]

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 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]

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][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]

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 Bront 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.

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.[39] 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 protg, 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.

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.

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