Short answers, pulled from the story.
HarperCollins Publishers LLC is a British-American multinational publishing company and one of the Big Five English-language publishers, alongside Penguin Random House, Hachette, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster. It is a subsidiary of News Corp, headquartered in both London and New York City.
HarperCollins was formed in 1989 when News Corp merged Harper & Row with William Collins, Sons. The name combines Harper, from the New York firm founded in 1817, with Collins, from the Glasgow firm founded in 1819. The logo fuses the flame from Harper's torch with the water from Collins' fountain.
Brian Murray has served as president and chief executive of HarperCollins since 2008, succeeding Jane Friedman who held the role from 1997 to 2008.
Approximately 250 unionized workers represented by Local 2110 of the United Auto Workers began an indefinite strike on the 10th of November 2022, after working without a contract since April of that year. The union ratified a new contract on the 16th of February 2023, raising the annual starting salary from $45,000 to $47,500 upon ratification and setting it to reach $50,000 by 2025.
HarperCollins blocked East and West, the memoir of Hong Kong's last British governor Chris Patten, after a direct intervention by Rupert Murdoch, then CEO of News International. The block was intended to avoid antagonizing Chinese authorities, as Murdoch wanted to expand his business interests in China. Patten later published through Macmillan and received £500,000 and a formal apology from Murdoch after a legal campaign.
HarperCollins holds publishing rights to J. R. R. Tolkien's works, including The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, acquired in 1990. Its backlist also includes works by Agatha Christie, Neil Gaiman, Hilary Mantel, Paulo Coelho, and classic children's titles overseen by Ursula Nordstrom such as Where the Wild Things Are, Charlotte's Web, and The Giving Tree.