Pretty Good, For a Book Publisher! Harper Collins Stars Frey, Wall, Oz Earn Rupert Murdoch … Millions!
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News Corp.’s fourth quarter earnings report is in, and it looks like HarperCollins made Rupert Murdoch about as much money this year ($160 million) as it did in 2007. His TV, cable, and film divisions, meanwhile, made him about $1.3 billion each!
Sorry, sorry, just some perspective. Back to HarperCollins: earnings for this quarter ($29 million) were down slightly compared to Q3, but up by a full third compared to Q4 last year. According to the summary provided in the report, the biggest titles of the quarter were James Frey’s Bright Shiny Morning, Elissa Wall’s Stolen Innocence, and an updated edition of YOU: The Owner’s Manual by Michael F. Roizen and Mehmet Oz.
For reference, Bright Shiny Morning has clocked 59,973 copies on BookScan, which means that it has actually sold somewhere in the neighborhood of 86,000. List price for the book was $26.95 per book, which puts gross sales for each copy at about $13.50 and gross sales overall at about $1.2 million.