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When HarperCollins was founded in 1817, books traveled by horse-drawn carriage. Two centuries and 250,000 titles later, imprints within the publishing giant are proving that even the most established brands want to evolve—not by abandoning what works, but by expanding what’s possible.
Two of those imprints, HarperCollins Christian Publishing and HarperCollins Focus have built an empire on traditional distribution channels. Seven dedicated sales representative groups cover the United States and build relationships door by door. Yet even with this extensive network, gaps remain. Remote retailers can’t always meet with reps. Boutique stores might never make it to trade shows. Non-traditional outlets—the kind of places you wouldn’t expect to find books—remain untapped.
Whitney Zapffe, director of gift sales, and Jaclyn Waggner, senior director of specialty sales, are the executives charged with bridging these gaps. For HarperCollins Focus and HarperCollins Christian Publishing, their mission goes beyond maintaining the status quo. This fiscal year alone, they’re tasked with opening 3,000 new doors for HarperCollins titles.
“We’ve been using gift representative groups for decades, and they’ve done a great job,” Zappi explains. “But that means they have to physically go into stores and collect that business and those orders.”
The team was looking for ways to reach new customers more efficiently, so they turned to Faire. The results speak volumes: 81% of HarperCollins’ orders through Faire come from entirely new customers—retailers that weren’t accessible through traditional channels.
The multiplier effect
Perhaps the most compelling part of HarperCollins’ wholesale evolution is how it amplifies existing efforts. With the majority of their Faire orders coming from new customers and a goal to open 3,000 new doors this fiscal year, the platform is a force multiplier for their sales team.
During Faire Market week alone, the results exceeded expectations. “We were really blown away at the sales,” Wagner shares. Now, with one market week under their belt, they’re setting more ambitious targets. “We’ve heard other publishers have done over £82,000 (about $100,000) in business that week. That would be a goal for us next time.”
For other enterprise brands watching from the sidelines, HarperCollins offers a practical blueprint. The most successful approach combines traditional and digital wholesale channels, using each channel’s strengths to complement the other.
“It’s modernizing our business,” Wagner says. “For specialty sales to have an online wholesale marketplace where customers can shop is really a fresh and exciting way of doing business.”
An easy upgrade with big benefits
With Faire Direct, Harper Collins modernized their old-school distribution methods. Faire Direct provides brands with powerful, easy-to-use tools that allow them to take orders from any retailer, anywhere with all the benefits of Faire—including 60-day payment terms for eligible retailers and free returns on opening orders—without paying commission on those relationships.
The special sales team has embedded their Faire Direct link on both their HarperCollins Focus and HarperCollins Christian Publishing websites so retailers have one-click access to their Faire shop. They’ve also revamped their social media strategy. “ In our social media posts and stories we say, “We’re on Faire. Come visit us here,” using our Faire Direct links.” Now, any interested retailer – whether a bookseller or not – can go in one click from their website to a wholesale order, while getting all the benefits of buying on Faire.
The technical implementation proved surprisingly simple. “It was super easy to set up,” according to Wagner. “I forwarded everything to our marketing operations team, and within five minutes, it was complete.”
The economic benefits are clear. When HarperCollins drives traffic through their own channels—whether from their websites, social media, or existing customer outreach—they maintain those relationships while providing retailers with Faire’s buyer benefits. Plus, they won’t pay commission on the orders that they drive.
For a company processing thousands of orders, that efficiency compounds quickly.
“From a business standpoint, Faire has been a great partner,” Zappi says. “We really appreciate that the existing traffic we drive isn’t charged a commission.”
Using Faire Direct also provides something traditional wholesale rarely offers: real-time visibility. Orders flow directly into their system, ready for fulfillment, without the typical back-and-forth of traditional wholesale order-taking applications, forms, and invoicing. It’s less manual and more automatic.
The both/and strategy that legacy brands need
HarperCollins publishes thousands of books across 120 imprints in more than a dozen languages. Eventually, the brand needed to modernize their work without jettisoning the strategies that made it a giant.
The company’s distribution network is extensive: seven gift rep groups covering the United States, relationships built over decades, presence at major trade shows. These channels have served them well, but geography and logistics create inevitable limitations.
“Even though we’re a little late to the game, Faire changed a lot for us. It has really helped to expand even in super remote areas,” Wagner says.
The shift reflects a strategic expansion rather than a replacement. HarperCollins maintains its sales rep groups covering the U.S. while tapping into Faire’s broad reach. The data validates this approach—while 81% of orders come from new customers, the remaining 20% represents returning customers who find the platform convenient for reordering and appreciate the net 60 payment terms and other buyer benefits they can’t get elsewhere.
Zappi says, “It’s like a layman using Amazon every day. Faire is helping make it simple for these retailers who need to get orders in an efficient manner.”
This hybrid approach reflects a broader truth about legacy brands: longevity comes from knowing what to preserve and what to evolve. For a company that’s survived everything from the telegraph to TikTok, adapting distribution methods is simply another chapter in a very long story.
The bookstore is everywhere now
Walk into a traditional bookstore and you expect to find HarperCollins titles. But what about a boutique hotel in Montana? A specialty coffee shop in Maine? A florist in Nebraska?
The HarperCollins special sales team pushes the limits of traditional book retail, placing titles wherever readers are. Wagner puts it simply: “Special sales is about finding books in places you wouldn’t typically think to find them—but once you do, it makes perfect sense. Modernizing our reach across all these new stores and new accounts is really exciting.” Where they once saw non-bookstores, they now see undiscovered audiences.
Now that they’ve harnessed the power of Faire Direct, they’re “seeing more niche retailers like interior decorators, restaurants, bakeries, even florists that carry our books now,” Zappi says. “There are places where our traditional channels can’t easily reach or retailers who can’t travel to gift shows to see our products. Now they can easily purchase online. Faire is opening doors that we weren’t in before, and that’s a huge company initiative for us.”
This expansion into non-traditional retail spaces addresses a fundamental challenge in publishing: readers are everywhere, but bookstores aren’t. By meeting customers where they already shop and by harnessing Faire’s online reach, HarperCollins turns every retail space into a potential discovery point for books.
HarperCollins’ 200-year journey reveals that longevity requires reinvention, not repetition. They’ve stopped asking where books should be sold and started asking where readers actually shop. The answer? Everywhere.
