John Bond has spent over twenty years in UK trade publishing, encompassing roles such as Marketing Director at Penguin and Group Sales and Marketing Director at HarperCollins. In April this year, he co-founded whitefox, a service designed to ‘cut through the clutter, using the right talent for the right project in the right way.’

Seemingly confirming that the tyrannical hold of Tim Burton over Johnny Depp works on some kind of Cabinet of Dr. Caligari close-proximity hypnosis basis (Burton’s Frankenweenie, currently in cinemas, is his first film since 2003′s Big Fish not to feature Depp in some capacity), the erstwhile Edward Scissorhands has revealed he is using the time away from his sinister overlord to launch his own publishing imprint with HarperCollins US. Talks are presumably underway on just how much money it would take to 1) retrieve the ashes of Hunter S. Thompson from the atmosphere 2) reconstitute them into some corporeal form that could type, or at least dictate, and 3) lock said ash being into a five book deal.

With Amazon announcing in early September that they were looking at novel serialisation, we got to wondering what goes into getting the content to you, in a non book form. I mean, would you really have read John Major’s exploits if you hadn’t picked up a paper in your local, mid Sunday roast lull? Here, Caroline Crofts, UK Rights Manager for HarperCollins, talks seriously about serial…

HarperCollins’ sci-fi, horror and otherwise otherworldly imprint Harper Voyager has announced that, for the first time in over a decade, it will be accepting un-agented submissions from authors, with a view to building a backlog it can then publish as monthly e-books. For the fortnight spanning 1 October to 14 October, new writers can head to http://www.harpervoyagersubmissions.com/ and, having filled out the accompanying form and checked that they have complied with the publisher’s guidelines, submit their long-brewing masterpiece about the grim dystopian future where the hair cuts you!, or whatever.

While rain bucketed down across London earlier in the month, the HarperCollins Marketing team took to Brent Cross with a troop of professional dancers who performed a Flash Mob Tango Dance to shoppers throughout the afternoon.

The event was so successful that the dancers, usually seen treading the boards in the West End rather than in shopping centres, performed two extra times to keep the crowds happy.

The occasion marked the launch of Daisy Waugh’s  new novel Last Dance with Valentino, based on the life of the screen legend and heartthrob. Waugh spent more than a decade researching Valentino’s life.