HarperCollins CEO Brian Murray told an investor conference in June that the publisher is, “Being aggressive in terms of buying books. We’ve seen the book pie grow, maybe 15 percent. And so our response, which is part opportunistic and part defensive, is to be aggressive in buying right now.” Our exclusive analysis of deal transactions in the second quarter of 2021 confirms that behavior, across the industry. In the first quarter, US deal volume was 19 percent higher than a year ago (and 21 percent higher than the recent four-year average). For the second quarter, deal volume again registered 18 […]
Deals
Forthcoming: Egan’s New Novel
The Candy House, Jennifer Egan‘s “hotly anticipated sibling novel” to her Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad, will be published by Scribner on April 5, 2022 (and by Little Brown UK’s Corsair). It features “entwined characters and plot points that overlap with A Visit from the Goon Squad….” Egan says it, “Follows a number of its peripheral characters into their own futures and pasts to create an independent work with a new set of preoccupations and center of gravity, but equal affinity for technology, humor, and structural freedom.”
And the Next Thing
Thanks for the nice feedback on our updated Lunch design (and remember to expect Weekly and Daily Deals to switch over to the new format next week). Our development pipeline has been especially busy lately and today we are rolling out a new site refinement we hope you will find useful. Ever since we launched the Dealmakers interface, it has been our most-visited data collection in the aggregate. All along, the Dealmaker lists have surfaced the most active buyers and sellers across about 70 categories and sub-categories. As the industry has finally started to diversify more meaningfully, we wanted to […]
Deals: Harper Acquires King Archives
Harper Collins will become the official publisher of Dr. Martin Luther King’s archives, acquiring world rights to all formats and languages, including children’s books, graphic novels, and audiobooks. Their first titles will be published in January 2022 in the US, to coincide with Martin Luther King Day. The company announced that the Harper One Group “will appoint an archivist to facilitate access to the material, which will be available to all Harper Collins editors globally. The company’s many divisions will look to engage prominent Black scholars, actors, artists, performers, and social activists to help bring Dr. King’s works to life.” […]
Deals: Kushner, DeVos, McEnany
After bringing peace to the Middle East and curing Covid-19, Jared Kushner will write “the definitive, thorough recounting of the [Trump] administration and the truth about what happened behind closed doors” for Harper imprint Broadside Books. They call him “the most consequential adviser throughout President Trump’s presidency” who “played a central role in the administration’s most significant accomplishments.” The book will be published early next year. The NYT reported that former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos “has also sold a book” — but they don’t know to whom. Among the other not-at-all silenced members of the previous administration, Kayleigh McEnany’s For […]
Harper Has Been “Very Aggressive” In Buying New Titles As Market Continues to Grow
HarperCollins ceo Brian Murray was interviewed Tuesday morning as part of a Credit Suisse investor conference, where he explained the trade publishing business’s growing sales and margins. Murray made clear, “We are being aggressive in terms of buying books. We’ve seen the book pie grow, maybe 15 percent. And so our response, which is part opportunistic and part defensive, is to be aggressive in buying right now. Because if that pie remains large, we want to make sure that we get a nice share of the larger pie. And if it happens to wane a little bit, we want to […]