Harpercollins Reports Static Results. Releases Authonomy.com

Harpercollins produced revenues of $302mm in their 3rd quarter ended March 31st which compared favorably with the same period last year ($291mm). For the nine months, revenues continue to lag the performance in 2007. 2008 YTD revenues of $1,038mm are marginally lower by $14mm.

Operating income as described in NewsCorp's press release was as follows:

HarperCollins reported third quarter operating income of $29 million, in-line with the same period a year ago. The current quarter included strong sales of Naughty Neighbor by Janet Evanovich, Stop Whining, Start Living by Dr. Laura Schlessinger, Lady Killer by Lisa Scottoline, Fancy Nancy, Bonjour Butterfly by Jane O.Connor and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis. During the quarter, HarperCollins had 54 books on The New York Times bestseller list, including 4 titles that reached the #1 spot.

Again, no mention of the performance of Harpercollins on the earnings call.

On another note, Harpercollins UK announced last year that they were establishing a site for authors which they named authonomy. The site is now in private beta and is covered by fellow traveller James Bridle at Booktwo.org.

The real challenge, of course, is to persuade wannabe writers to post their work at all - in my own personal experience, unpublished writers are terrified of their work being ’stolen’, enough to be suspicious of publishers themselves, let alone your average web surfer. The Front List, a previous attempt at a “YouTube for books”/”crowdsourcing the slushfile”-type site, solved this by hiding everything from non-members; one approach certainly, but not one likely to bring in the crowds.

James is also an author.