Friedman Steps Down as President and CEO of HarperCollins

HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide announced Wednesday that President and Chief Executive Officer Jane Friedman would be stepping down from her position, effective immediately. Brian Murray, president of HarperCollins, was named as her successor. The announcement came less than a month after Random House announced the departure of its CEO Peter W. Olson. Both Olson and Friedman had held their respective positions for 10 years.

“My 10 years at HarperCollins have been far and away the most rewarding of my career, and so it was not easy to make the decision to step down,” says Friedman. “It has been a great privilege to develop and lead the best and brightest team in the world of publishing as we created and implemented innovative programs which placed HarperCollins at the forefront of the 21st-century publishing world. We have expanded opportunities for our authors to connect with our readers across many different mediums, while also encouraging a new generation to get excited about reading.”

“I am thrilled to be taking on this new role,” says Murray, who joined HarperCollins in 1997 and was appointed president in July 2007. “I am looking forward to working with my colleagues to invest in and grow our publishing businesses around the world at a time when digital technologies are creating new opportunities to bring authors and readers together.”

Of her tenure at her HarperCollins, Friedman says, “During the past decade, we have enjoyed tremendous success while expanding our brand online and around the world. Our accomplishments include more than doubling the company’s profits over the past 10 years; launching the Publishing+ program that has made HarperCollins an industry leader in the world of digital publishing; our authors, whose excellence was recently recognized with the awarding of two Pulitzer Prizes and the Nobel Prize for Literature in recent months; a company-record 25 books on the New York Times best-seller list just last week; and expansion to new markets around the world including India and China.”