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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. History 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. 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. 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. Mergers and acquisitions 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 1990, 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. In 1990, HarperCollins sold J. B. Lippincott & Co., its medical publishing division, to the Dutch publisher Wolters Kluwer. In 1996, HarperCollins sold Scott Foresman and HarperCollins College to Pearson, which merged them with Addison-Wesley Longman. 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. HarperCollins bought educational publisher Letts and Lonsdale in March 2010. In 2011, HarperCollins announced they had agreed to acquire the publisher Thomas Nelson. 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. Both Thomas Nelson and Zondervan were then organized as imprints, or "keystone publishing programs," under a new division, HarperCollins Christian Publishing. Key roles in the reorganization were awarded to former Thomas Nelson executives. In 2012, HarperCollins acquired part of the trade operations of John Wiley & Son in Canada. In 2014, HarperCollins acquired Canadian romance publisher Harlequin Enterprises for C$455 million. In 2018, HarperCollins acquired the business publisher Amacom from the American Management Association. In 2020, HarperCollins acquired the children's publishers Egmont Books UK, Egmont Poland and Schneiderbuch Germany from the Egmont Group. 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. The deal was completed on 10 May. 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. In 2021, HarperCollins acquired the British publishers Pavilion Books. In 2022 HarperCollins acquired Cider Mill Press. Management history Brian Murray, 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. 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. 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. 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. HarperCollins previously closed two US warehouses, one in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, in 2011 and another in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 2012. "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 E.... Discover the Harpercollins popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Harpercollins books.