“Norma needs a case of books, immediately.”
Norma McCorvey, known to most as Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade, was trying to convince a young girl not to have an abortion. She wanted to give the girl her autobiography and conversion testimony, “Won by Love,” but she had run out of copies.
So, she reached out to her publisher: HarperCollins Christian Publishing.
The staff at HarperCollins immediately set to work overnighting a box of books to their author.
HarperCollins’ immediate response to McCorvey’s plight is characteristic of the company’s heartfelt passion for sharing the Gospel. With the mission to “inspire the world by meeting the needs of people with content that promotes biblical principles and honors Jesus Christ,” HarperCollins Christian Publishing (HCCP) comes alongside Christians and organizations to help them thank donors, publish books, and read the Bible well.
The roots of HCCP date all the way back to 1798, when Thomas Nelson opened a publishing house for Christian classics in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 1982, Thomas Nelson released the New King James Version, a top-ranked Bible translation still owned by HCCP today.
Meanwhile, Pat and Bernard Zondervan opened their own Christian publishing house in Grand Rapids, Mich., in 1931. Zondervan released the New International Version of the Bible in 1978, another popular Bible currently distributed by HCCP.
Zondervan and Thomas Nelson became HarperCollins Christian Publishing after HarperCollins acquired them in 1988 and 2012, respectively. As the second largest consumer publishing organization in the world, HarperCollins endeavors to strengthen Christian ministries and make the Word of God accessible around the world.
The company has readily adapted to a digital environment, offering all their published works in e-book and audiobook formats while running a strong Online Communities division, which includes resources like BibleGateway, FaithGateway, and Study Gateway. However, spokesperson Beth Ryan noted that print books are still in high demand.
“A lot of times, people want both
because when they’re in their cars, they want to be able to listen to the book,” Ryan said, “but when they get home, they want to curl up with a physical book.”
Designing physical books with purposeful form and function is one of the things HarperCollins does best.
“We do a lot of custom products for ministries … many of whom are NRB members,” said Ryan, who works as their senior director of ministry services. HCCP recently printed a beautiful leatherbound edition of Billy Graham’s autobiography “Just As I Am” for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s 75th anniversary. The special edition was designed as a gift for ministry partners.
When the “He Gets Us” television campaign reached out to HarperCollins to create a thank you gift for donors, HCCP produced a customized two-volume set which included a note from “He Gets Us” thanking their donors at the beginning of “Gospel Patrons,” a book which walks through the stories of individuals who funded the work of Christian leaders such as William Tyndale and George Whitefield.
However, not every gift requires customization. Simply sharing a Bible can be deeply meaningful.
“That would be a tremendous gift of life impact to a donor,” Ryan said, “because of what they would be doing as they learn and grow in faith and imparting that to the next generations behind them.”
Early in Ryan’s career, HCCP worked with Open Doors, a ministry of Brother Andrew, to print one million Chinese Bibles. The operation was secretive, so Ryan went years without knowing what had happened to the Bibles. When she finally heard stories of the Christians who had smuggled the Bibles into China, Ryan broke down crying.
“Some of the people that met the boats to smuggle these Bibles into China had been caught, and they had been in prison all their lives since then,” Ryan said. “And just the realization of … the sacrifice that they made to try to share the love of Christ — it was so inspiring to me.”
While HarperCollins is active in spreading the Gospel overseas, they are also hard at work making the Bible more accessible to everyday Americans. As the distributors of the NIV and owners of the NKJV, Zondervan and Thomas Nelson work as divisions of HCCP to develop Bibles suitable for reading, study, and journaling.
To that end, HarperCollins designed the Comfort Print to make engaging the Word of God easier and keep believers in the Word for longer. Last year, they launched the NIV Application Bible. This year, in conjunction with Walk Thru the Bible, HCCP released “Read. Think. Live.,” a devotional Bible designed to orient readers to their place in God’s story through rhythms of reading, thinking, and living.
Whether by encouraging donor support, facilitating self-publishing, or printing Bibles for the underground church, HCCP is constantly doing something special to deliver the Gospel into the hands and hearts of needful individuals around the world.
HarperCollins has been an NRB member since 1994. To learn more, visit harpercollinschristian.com.
Click here to explore an interactive journey through the history of HarperCollins.