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HC Profits Up 200% in Year; Hemming Is New Publisher
John F. Baker -- 8/17/98
HarperCollins increased its operating profits 200% on flat revenues in the year ending June 30, according to the annual report of parent News Corp.Publishing revenues stayed even at $737 million worldwide, but profits increased from $12 million to $37 million, attributed to "a more focused publishing program, decreased returns and some significant bestsellers," News Corp said. It cited James Cameron's Titanic, Rebecca Wells's Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, the paperback of Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm and, in children's books, Laura Numeroff's If You Give a Pig a Pancake and some Anastasia tie-ins as star performers. Fourth-quarter results recorded $11 million in operating profit, compared to $1 million a year ago.
New Harper CEO Jane Friedman was ebullient, saying of her first nine months at the company, "It's been a very positive journey." She told PW that reduced returns -- which she said were down $57 million worldwide in the past year -- had been a major contributor to the hugely improved results, as well as the reduction of title output, by about 25%. "We're now much better focused in both publishing and marketing," she said. She was particularly pleased with the large number of bestsellers in the past quarter and with their longevity, noting that consumers were "reacting well to our ongoing marketing efforts."
The publishing results came in a context of what News Corp. called "the highest earnings in the company's history," driven also by the success of the movies Titanic and The Full Monty. Full-year net profits were $1.22 billion.
Hemming Arrives from Random
Cathy Hemming has been named to the newly created position of executive v-p and publisher of the HarperCollins adult trade group, and will begin work there this week. She was previously publisher of Random House adult trade, where she had gone earlier this year after a number of senior positions in her seven years at Penguin USA, most recently as president of Penguin International.
Friedman, announcing the appointment, said Hemming will be responsible in her new role for all publishing functions in the group, including editorial, marketing and subsidiary rights.
Meanwhile, David Steinberger, who had been president of the trade group, moves to the newly created position of president, international and corporate strategy, in which he will oversee Harper companies in Australia and New Zealand, Canada and the U.K. from a business and operations perspective.
The two new appointments, Friedman said, along with the recent promotion of Glenn D'Agnes to COO, and the ongoing roles of Susan Katz in the children's division and Bruce Ryskamp at Zondervan, meant that "HarperCollins's executive team in the U.S. is firmly in place."
Hemming told PW it had been "an agonizing decision" to leave Random so soon, but she felt the opportunity to work at Harper was "one I couldn't pass up." One of the reasons she was especially tempted, she said, was because of the opportunity it would offer to work closely on the publishing side with Harper UK. "I guess I missed the international aspects I had been involved with at Penguin," she said.
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