News Briefings: HarperCollins Strives for Global Reach | Book Scanning Service1DollarScan Integrates with Evernote. Everyone happy?
This summer, HarperCollins announced it would be launching a global publishing program called HarperCollins 360, designed to increase availability of the publisher's titles across all English-speaking markets.
The idea is to use a network of print-on-demand [POD] facilities located in regional warehouses so that any title in English will be available in any English-language market, making rights, and not technology or geography, the only impediment to getting a book into a customer's hands.
According to Jean Marie Kelly, the newly appointed Affiliate Publisher of HarperCollins 360, the program rolled out by making 400 backlist titles (not via POD) from the publisher's U.K. division available to U.S. warehouses. The titles had previously been available through distributor Trafalgar. HarperCollins 360's plan is to make more front-list titles available through the program, with three scheduled for this fall, and five more, says Kelly, this winter.
The three lined up for imminent release are: the continuation of Janny Wurts' epic fantasy series "Wars of Light And Shadow;" "Hobbitus Ille: The Latin Hobbit"; and what could be the final major work from yoga master B. K. S. Iyengar, "Heart of the Yoga Sutras."
"I think in this new age, with all the technology we have, why do we have some books unavailable [in some regions]?" asks Kelly of the impetus behind the program. "Whether it's Australia, New Zealand, the U.K. or Canada, we want to make that book available to anyone who wants to have it."
By using POD technology in partnership with Donnelly in the U.K. and Australia (and with plans to have a U.S. POD operation running within one year), titles needn't be warehoused in a region to be available there for print purchase. This is good news for consumers—who may have had to pay exorbitant international shipping on titles—and good news for authors.
