Sales, Earnings Rebound At HarperCollins

HarperCollins rebounded from a soft fiscal first quarter to report an 8.2% sales increase in the second quarter, to $289 million. Operating income for the quarter ended December 31, 2001, rose 5.0% to $42 million. HC president Jane Friedman said she was "as thrilled as could be" with results in the period.

Revenues were up in all of HC's units around the world. J.R.R. Tolkien books plus the sale of more than 600,000 copies of Billy, a book about the popular British comedian Billy Connolly, translated into extremely strong sales in the U.K. Tolkien titles and the success of the cookbook Off the Shelf were the recipe for solid sales gains in Australia. Clara Callan, which won both the Giller Prize and the Governor General's Award for Fiction, along with The Corrections spurred gains in Canada.

Friedman said any weaknesses HC had in the U.S. "went away" in the second quarter. The children's group, helped by its strong backlist coupled with the popular Lemony Snicket titles, had a strong quarter. The general book group, which was "a bit light" in the first quarter, recovered in the second period and is poised for a good third quarter, Friedman said. Indeed, Friedman told PW she was confident that the entire company "is on track for a very good year."

For the first six months of the year, operating profits fell 7.8% to $83 million, while revenues slipped to $602 million from $604 million in the first half of fiscal 2001.

Riding high from a series of successes last year, HC Canada has initiated several changes in its management, including the creation of a new position to focus on special projects.

"We have had an excellent publishing year," said Iris Tupholme, president and publisher of HarperCollins Canada. In addition to Clara Callan and The Corrections, other books that did well include The Ash Garden by first-time novelist Dennis Bock and Dust by Arthur Slade, which won the Governor General's Award for Children's Literature.

Among the new appointments is Martha Watson, most recently a v-p of publicity for McArthur & Company, who joined HC as director of publicity. Jeannine Rosenberg has been named director of special projects, a new position. Rosenberg was hired in July as the Canadian marketing and publicity coordinator to oversee the Lord of the Rings project, working closely with Alliance Atlantis, the Canadian distributor of the film. "The Lord of the Rings has been an extraordinary success," said Tupholme. "Jeannine Rosenberg's efforts on Lord of the Rings were very successful, and we could see that there was room within our own publishing company to focus on specific projects and give them a particular level of attention."

Don Charlton, formerly the publicity coordinator at Somerville House, has been hired as a sales assistant, and Lynne Missen will be replacing Marie Campbell as children's editor. Akka Janssen has been named subsidiary rights coordinator, while Siobhan Blessing, formerly an editorial assistant at HarperCollins, has been appointed assistant editor.