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HarperCollins is this month launching its global publishing arm, HarperCollins 360. The new venture aims to publish in the UK HC titles that were previously only available abroad.
HarperCollins 360 selects and publishes English-language titles originally published in the US, New Zealand and Australia. It also aims to include Indian and Canadian titles in the next 18 months. The imprint has plans to launch 450 bestselling titles in the UK.
The publisher launched 27 titles this month, with the bulk being published yesterday (30th Jan). The launch titles include a movie tie-in edition to Joyce Maynard’s Labor Day (pb, £7.99); Dollhouse, a novel by Kim Kardashian (pb, £7.99); and Jonathan Bailor’s The Calorie Myth (hb, £16.99). Titles coming up in the next few months include the non-fiction ADHD Does Not Exist by Richard Saul (27th March, hb, £15.99), which has garnered a lot of press in the US; Here We Are Now, a biography of Kurt Cobain to tie-in with the 20th anniversary of the musician’s death (10th April, hb, £14.99); and Chocolates for Breakfast by Pamela Moore, which was originally published in the 1950s by a teenage Moore (5th June, pb, £8.99).
Australian titles will be brought in this year, and one of the first is The Monday Morning Cookery Club. It was written by six Jewish women who shared recipes at a weekly coffee morning. They self-published their recipes before Harper Australia bought the book. Affiliate publisher Karen Davies said 360’s list includes a lot of niche, quirky titles “that not all UK publishers would be able to do. We’re uniquely set up to be able to do that . . . we can just bring in the quantities we know will sell in the UK.” The list includes a range of craft and highly designed books, as well as children’s, business and diet.
“Trends like diet and health start in the US,” Davies said, “and because we’ve got access to [US] sales, marketing and PR data . . . we can see some trends starting. So then we can adapt our plans. Like ADHD Does Not Exist, you can see in the US that is very quickly getting traction, so we can adapt our plans to capitalise on the publicity.”
Davies also cited social media as a factor in 360’s conception: “Because of social media people know about books coming out in the US or Australia and they want them sooner, rather than having to wait six months or a year. Publishing is a lot more instant now.”