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24th July 2008

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September launch for HC e-books

24.04.08 Graeme Neill

HarperCollins has become the latest publisher to back e-books with plans to publish titles in print and e-format simultaneously from this autumn.

HC UK c.e.o. Victoria Barnsley said the publisher was working towards a September launch for its e-books programme, which will use the .epub format. "Every publisher is really getting their act together," she said. "We want to go when the actual hardware is available over here." Penguin is also gearing up for a September move into e-books.

All of HC's new titles, except for illustrated books or those with formatting problems, will be published in e-book format from the autumn. HC is also looking at clearing e-books rights on its backlist, with plans to have 2,500 backlist titles available as e-books from the autumn.

Meanwhile, HC UK's most recent accounts show a 3.8% growth in operating profit for the year to 30th June 2007. Profit rose £500,000 to £14.04m and turnover grew £3.9m to £177.3m, a growth of 2.2%.  Barnsley said that profits were depressed by a £1.2m increase in the cost of share options exercised in parent company NewsCorp’s share option scheme during that year.

She said that the individual divisions' performance was "very pleasing", especially in fiction and non-fiction. Children’s was down thanks to the lack of a Narnia title, "but excluding that children's was well up due to Skulduggery Pleasant and Darren Shan”. She added that Fourth Estate was also down "a little".

Barnsley said she was pleased with the results and was confident about how the publisher would perform in 2008. "The state of the economy is unsettling but we have a good list and a great team here."

 

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