Stories

In 1977, a handful of Harper & Row employees from the Religious Books Department moved from New York to San Francisco to focus on titles pertaining to mind, body, and spirit. The Religious Books Department at Harper & Row had existed for approximately 50 years, publishing such notable names as Martin Heidegger, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm Muggeridge. “Religion” as a book category remained a separate entity, but in the late 1980s, an increase in religion trade publishing houses gave rise to books that blended the religious and spiritual in what one author described as “portable pastors,” books with the aim of “creating divine space in people’s lives.”

In 1992, six of the company’s divisions on the West Coast were brought together to form the HarperCollins San Francisco group, which included Harper San Francisco, Collins Publishers San Francisco, The Understanding Business (TUB), Access Productions, HarperCollins Direct, and HarperCollins West. The company’s California outpost then went through several incarnations before settling on its current mix of titles around 1995. In a move to better reflect its focus and underline its wider relevance, the group was renamed and relaunched in 2007 (on its thirtieth birthday) as the imprint HarperOne. The new HarperOne was the only West Coast editorial division of any major New York publisher.

Today HarperOne publishes books across the full spectrum of religion, spirituality, health, personal growth, social change, relationships, and leadership, adding to the wealth of the world’s wisdom by stirring the waters of reflection on the primary questions of life and inspiring readers to make change, both inside and out. Its authors include C. S. Lewis, Rob Bell, Marianne Williamson, Paulo Coelho, Deepak Chopra, Dr. Joel Fuhrman, Bart Ehrman, and many others.