HarperCollins Axes Collins

The big publishing restructuring news this week is from HarperCollins, which is chopping off the latter half of its name -- the Collins non-fiction division -- integrating former Collins imprints into Harper's General Books Group, and layout off an unspecified number of employees. Named in the memo today as leaving the company are Steve Ross, president and publisher of Collins, and Lisa Gallagher, senior v-p and publisher of William Morrow, but it's clear that more cuts, and possibly very deep cuts, will follow.

This radical change follow closely on the heels of the dismal quarterly earnings of Harper's parent, News Corporation. It's clear that NewsCorp head Rupert Murdoch won't be throwing money at Harper the way he has at the New York Post.

[via Publishers Weekly]

Update:
More details came out a day later, and they're not pretty. Two imprints are gone entirely: the just about to launch children's boutique The Bowen Press and the Spanish-language Rayo. (Spanish-language publishing is getting hit pretty hard in this economy, with Rayo and Publishers Weekly's Criticas magazine both closing. I hope that this will mean a new flourishing of small Spanish-language presses, but I'm not that Republican.)

Harper is also bringing the children's publishing group, formerly in separate offices, together with the adult group. And that implies some serious layoffs, though Harper is not commenting on reports that 60 jobs have been lost, or that 5% of their workforce will be eventually cut.

[via another Publishers Weekly article]

Update 2: Locus reports that Eos has lost associate director of publicity Jack Womack and assistant editor Emily Krump in the restructuring. Best wishes to both of them, and all of their unnumbered laid-off colleagues, in a speedy job search.