Hachette has continued to "publish at the top of the marketplace," as CEO Michael Pietsch put it, citing such authors as Nicholas Sparks, David Baldacci, Malcolm Gladwell, Michael Connelly, Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer, Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child and Sherman Alexie. All these authors, whose sales have grown steadily, were with the company 10 years ago.
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The most striking example of a major longtime Hachette author is James Patterson, "the bestselling writer in America," Pietsch said. Besides publishing an ever-increasing number of Patterson's titles, Hachette Book Group has helped the author develop new endeavors and new kinds of books, including jimmy patterson, his children's book line, and the soon-to-be-launched BookShots (featuring short novels selling for $5), which Pietsch described as "an entirely new kind of book designed for readers' crowded lives today."
At the same time, Hachette has been adding and developing new and bestselling authors such as Elin Hilderbrand, Gwyneth Paltrow and her Goop Press imprint, Tina Fey and Brent Weeks; in manga, Sword Art Online and Black Butler; in kids' books, Jerry Pinkney; and, in romance, Jodi Ellen Malpas.
Among the many ways Hachette acts as a partner with authors is through constant communication. It's easy for publishers to forget that authors often go for long periods of silence, even while the publisher is working hard for them, Pietsch said. "For authors to feel like partners, you have to tell them every minute what you're doing in all its complexity and assume that they want to know. It's better to give them too much information than wait for them to come ask a question. So we've really worked hard throughout the whole company to make sure that everyone knows it's our responsibility to make the author part of the whole publishing conversation, not just the editorial conversation."
For now, Hachette is bringing Perseus's publishing operations aboard, adding some 500 titles a year to the 1,200 it has been publishing and boosting revenues 15%. The imprints--which include PublicAffairs, Basic Books, Da Capo, Avalon and Running Press--each have "a very particular domain expertise, passion, knowledge and an ability to shape projects that suit the market they know very well," Pietsch said. "That kind of directed publishing is something that we admire and broadens our reach."
While Little, Brown and Grand Central have "wonderful" nonfiction programs, Pietsch said, it was a major benefit to Hachette to acquire "a company whose DNA is nonfiction" and is focused on backlist. The resulting steady financial profile--partly because it relies less on e-books and more than 60% of sales are backlist--makes Hachette "less susceptible to the shocks of frontlist ups and downs."
The companies' staffs are already getting to know each other, and "it feels like we're meeting cousins we hadn't known we had," Pietsch said. "It's been very familial, no shock to the system."
For the future, Hachette wants to retain its quality of publishing and excellence of marketing, and to come up with new ideas and new partnerships with authors and seize every new marketing opportunity. And the company wants to continue growing. "We want to be bigger," Pietsch said, "and have as many nonfiction bestsellers and long sellers as we have in fiction."