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In the 10 years since Hachette Livre bought Time Warner Book Group and created Hachette Book Group, the company has grown and changed dramatically--while keeping true to principles that attracted Hachette Livre's chairman and CEO Arnaud Nourry in the first place.
"We've always been a successful publisher known for our marketing, for our bestsellers and for our author development," explained CEO Michael Pietsch. Helped by having a core group of executives in place since before the purchase--besides Pietsch, they include the publishers Jamie Raab at Grand Central, Megan Tingley at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, Reagan Arthur at Little, Brown and Rolf Zettersten at Hachette Nashville; general counsel Carol Ross; sales director Chris Murphy; HR senior v-p Andrea Weinzimer; and communications senior v-p Sophie Cottrell--the company has continued to excel in those areas while growing significantly. "We've always wanted more scale in the U.S.," Pietsch noted.
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| Michael Pietsch | |
Consider these accomplishments in the past decade:
Hachette Book Group has grown internally by adding a range of new imprints and divisions, including Grand Central Life & Style, Mulholland Books, Forever Yours, Yen, Orbit, Hachette Books and Hachette Canada. Altogether, there are a dozen imprints that didn't exist 10 years ago.
The company has grown through acquisitions, particularly the purchases of Hyperion's adult trade list, Black Dog & Leventhal and, most recently, the publishing operations of Perseus Books Group, an acquisition that Pietsch called "foundational."
HBG has become a much more international publisher, partnering closely with Hachette Livre and Hachette U.K. on launching major authors and on distribution of its books in print and digital formats worldwide. With its Hachette colleagues abroad, it has published J.K. Rowling, Keith Richards, Donna Tartt, Nicholas Sparks, Stephenie Meyer, Michael Connelly, Malala Yousafzai, and more. "Our ability to market books internationally is something we're really proud of," Pietsch said. "And it's exciting to see how effectively our editors around the world have connected with each other."
The company has increased its distribution business to the point that distribution billings are as large as its publishing revenues--so large that in volume Hachette is now "the biggest distributor of third-party publishers in the U.S.," Pietsch said. During the last decade Chronicle Books, Disney, Marvel and Octopus have come to HBG for distribution. It also distributes Abrams, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Peterson's and Phaidon, among others. The company has expanded its Lebanon, Ind., warehouse three times in the past five years, to 1.8 million square feet. "We saw this as a big opportunity given that we have a very highly developed supply chain and distribution facility," Pietsch said. "Our client publishers get the benefit of our size, systems and prices, and we've been able to help them achieve what they want to achieve."
Hachette Book Group continues to adopt and use new online marketing possibilities and techniques, things "we couldn't have dreamed of five years ago," Pietsch said. These allow the company better than ever "to target and meet a particular reader with a particular book."
The company has continued to partner with authors--and in ever-new ways--and has increased the sales of its biggest authors, such as James Patterson, as well as developing new authors.
HBG has published across a wider range of subject areas, including science fiction, manga, and licensed publishing while significantly expanding its publishing in food and cookbooks, health, and illustrated and gift books "with new voices, major blockbusters, and everything in between," Pietsch said.
And through this growth, Hachette has continued to have a low title count and the highest rate of bestsellers per title published of any Big Five publisher, as Pietsch happily pointed out. And even after adding Perseus, the company will still put out fewer titles than the other major publishers in the U.S., bringing focus and excitement to every publication.