Vive
ndi has closed the sale of Editis, France's second largest publisher, to International Media Invest for €653 million (about $715 million). The Bookseller reported that the deal "includes the reimbursement of Editis' debt and is considerably less than the €900 million [about $985 million] Vivendi paid Spain's Grupo Planeta for the publisher in 2018."
In a statement, Vivendi said the sale of Gala magazine to the newspaper group Le Figaro is expected to go through by the end of this month, completing the two asset-shedding conditions the European Commission set for Vivendi to acquire the Lagardère Group, which owns Hachette Livre. The takeover "should take place in the coming weeks, allowing Vivendi to fully implement its ambitious development plan."
Catherine Lucet has replaced Michèle Benbunan as managing director of Editis. Lucet was head of the publisher's education and reference division and group deputy managing director, until she left in October 2022.
On November 8, Lagardère group had announced that chairman and CEO Arnaud Lagardère would take over from Pierre Leroy as head of Hachette Livre, with the aim of building on the publisher's "major projects and successes of recent years" as Vivendi's acquisition of Lagardère was about to go ahead.
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The 2024 RISE Bookselling Conference has released its program and announced that French author Manu Causse will be one of the keynote speakers. The second edition of the conference is scheduled for March 17-18 in Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, Portugal.
Over the course of two days, the program includes keynote speeches, presentations, workshops, and panel sessions, as well as the exchange of ideas with booksellers from around the world.
Last March, more than 230 international booksellers and book professionals gathered in Prague, Czech Republic, for the first edition of the RISE Bookselling Conference. Check out some of the highlights here.
RISE Bookselling is organized by the European and International Booksellers Federation and co-funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union.
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Congratulations to Bahrisons Booksellers, the iconic Indian bookstore in the Khan Market, New Delhi, which is celebrating its 70th anniversary. The Hindu reported that the shop "goes beyond its traditional role of selling books and remains a favorite hangout for seven decades.... Not much concerned about threats from the digital world, Bahrisons today has 10 shops--five in Delhi, two in Kolkata, and one each in Chandigarh, Gurugram, and Noida.
"When you are running a heritage bookstore, there is a goal to the legacy of the business," said owner Anuj Bahri Malhotra, who has stayed true to the dreams of his father's and his own: to get every book lover the book he or she comes looking for in the shop.
Since opening, Bahrisons has closed only on two occasions--on February 26, 2016, when Malhotra's father died, and for 10 days during the pandemic. "The Covid-19 days gave us courage," Malhotra said. "We knew our customers were confined to their homes, getting bored and wanting to read. We made personal calls to many while many others reached out to us. We got special permission from Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to open after 10 days and deliver books to our customers."
He added, "My father always sat at the cash counter. I feel his presence in the shop." --Robert Gray