ABOUT THIS COMPANY

ABOUT THIS COMPANY

The earliest incarnation of HarperCollins was founded in New York City by two of four Harper brothers in 1817 and called J&J Harper. In addition to an endless list of bestsellers, the Harper Brothers were responsible for the ever-popular Harper's Monthly and Harper's Bazaar magazines. In 1962 the company (renamed Harper & Brothers when the other two brothers joined) merged with textbook publisher Row, Petersen & Co. to become Harper & Row. In 1987, the company was acquired by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., and two years later it strengthened its textbook unit with the purchase of Scott, Foresman. When News Corp. acquired William Collins in 1990, the two were merged to form HarperCollins Publishers, which currently brings in revenue that tops $1 billion annually. In 2004, the company boasted 97 titles on The New York Times bestseller list, including nine books that made it to No. 1. HarperCollins also benefited from media tie-ins with the releases of films based on of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Meg Cabot's The Princess Diaries, Ira Levin's The Stepford Wives and Daniel Handler's Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Bestsellers

HarperCollins today boasts successful authors like Gregory Maguire (Wicked), Joyce Carol Oates (The Falls), John Gray (Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus), Wally Lamb (I Know This Much Is True), Barbara Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible), Dennis Lehane (Mystic River) and Michael Crichton (State of Fear). Imprints within the company include HarperCollins Adult Trade, William Morrow, Regan Books and HarperPerennial, which reprints classic pieces of literature with scholarly commentary. More recently, the company has also published bestsellers Marley & Me, by John Grogan, and the New York Post Sudoku books. The company's e-book imprint is Harper eBooks.

HarperCollins is no stranger to the pitfalls that have plagued the publishing industry in the past few years. In the mid-1990s, the company had to write off huge advances when books by celebrities such as Jay Leno turned out to be flops. Anthea Disney, formerly the editor-in-chief of TV Guide (then controlled by News Corp), was brought in by Murdoch as HarperCollins' CEO in 1996 to turn the unit into a moneymaker.

By June 1997, Disney had led the most expensive restructuring in publishing history. (In the first half of 1997, the company's operating profit fell almost 50 percent, despite an 11 percent increase in sales.) In the restructuring, the company took a $270 million charge, laid off 420 employees and canceled contracts with 106 authors. This event was soon dubbed the "manuscript massacre" by the media. With her eye on the bottom line, Disney also revised HC's publishing goals. The company began to focus on "high-concept" books in six areas: self-help and psychology; fiction; "headline-grabbing," sensational non-fiction; business; science fiction; and children's books. Needless to say, literary purists had a field day criticizing HarperCollins' business strategy.

Successful business strategy

But it was HarperCollins' turn to gloat by the time the restructuring was over. The unit had more books on the bestseller list in the summer of 1997 than any other publisher. By September 1997, Rupert Murdoch rewarded Disney for her economic belt-tightening by promoting her to lead his new publishing division, News America Publishing Group. One month later, Murdoch named Jane Friedman, a former top exec from Random House's prestigious Knopf imprint, as head of HarperCollins. Despite continuing worries among company insiders that Murdoch would sell HarperCollins and trigger another round of changes, the talk at the publishing house eventually returned to the business of books. Under Friedman, HarperCollins boasted 11 New York Times bestsellers in August 1998, including several titles in No.-1 spots.

HarperCollins also acquired Avon Books and William Morrow & Co. from the Hearst Corporation, in 1999 for about $200 million. That same year, HarperCollins made another acquisition, bringing Amistad Press, one of the country's leading publishers of works by and about African-Americans, into the fold, as well as The Ecco Press, a prestigious literary publisher. The acquisition of these imprints solidified HarperCollins' position as the second-largest publisher in the United States behind Random House. It also made the company the third-largest publisher of children's books. The HarperCollins children's division is responsible for favorites from author Shel Silverstein and the Lemony Snicket book series. Upon merging operations, Friedman divided HC into two divisions: HarperCollins General Books Group and HarperCollins Children's Book Group (located in different midtown Manhattan offices). Other changes included cutting 17 imprints and 74 people from the HC lineup. The company now publishes about 1,700 titles, which is about 20 percent fewer than the former entities combined.