Hachette Book Group (HBG) is a publishing company owned by Hachette Livre, the largest publishing company in France, and the third largest trade and educational publisher in the world. Hachette Livre is a wholly owned subsidiary of Lagardère Group. HBG was formed when Hachette Livre purchased the Time Warner Book Group from Time Warner on March 31, 2006. Its headquarters are located at 1290 Avenue of the Americas, Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Hachette is considered one of the big-five publishing companies, along with Holtzbrinck/Macmillan, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster. In one year, HBG publishes approximately 1400+ adult books (including 50-100 digital-only titles), 300 books for young readers, and 450 audio book titles (including both physical and downloadable-only titles). In 2016, the company had 214 books on the New York Times bestseller list, 44 of which reached #1.
Video Hachette Book Group
History
The earliest publisher to eventually become part of the Hachette Book Group was Little, Brown and Company, founded in 1837, acquired by Time Inc. in 1968.
Warner Communications had acquired the Paperback Library in 1970 to form Warner Books. In 1982, CBS Publications sold off Popular Library to Warner. In April 1985, Warner Books relaunched Popular Library starting out with five other books plus the reprint of Question of Upbringing continuing each month with the follow volumes from A Dance to the Music of Time series by Anthony Powell. Also, two books would be issued per month from Popular's new imprint, Questar, for science fiction.
Time Warner was formed in 1989 by the merger of Time and Warner. Publisher Macdonald & Co. was bought in 1992 to become part of the Time Warner Book Group UK, and in 1996 the various branches merged to become Time Warner Trade Publishing, later renamed as Time Warner Book Group. In 2003, Time Warner attempted to sell the Book Group but failed to get high enough bids. In March 2006, Time Warner completed the sale of the Book Group to Lagardère, which placed it under its Hachette Livre book publishing arm. The Warner Books subsidiary was renamed Grand Central Publishing, which launched a more literary imprint, Twelve, under former Random House editor-in-chief Jonathan Karp. On February 5, 2010, Hachette announced that it would adopt an agency pricing model for its e-books.
In April 2012, the United States Department of Justice filed United States v. Apple Inc., naming Apple, Hachette, and four other major publishers as defendants. The suit alleged that they conspired to fix prices for e-books, and weaken Amazon.com's position in the market, in violation of antitrust law. In December 2013, a federal judge approved a settlement of the antitrust claims, in which Hachette and the other publishers paid into a fund that provided credits to customers who had overpaid for books due to the price-fixing.
In June 2013, Hachette announced it would acquire Hyperion Books from Disney Publishing Worldwide. In March 2014, Hyperion was renamed Hachette Books.
In May 2014, Amazon.com announced it was no longer taking pre-orders for Hachette books, stating a breakdown in negotiations over profit-sharing arrangements. According to Hachette, Amazon had also stopped discounting its books, sending prices of Hachette titles in the U.S. to more than twice what they were selling for in the UK. Amazon published a letter in August 2014 asking authors and readers to email Hachette's CEO Michael Pietsch and ask for lower e-book prices. Pietsch reportedly replied to each message he received.
In November 2014, HBG announced that it had entered into an agreement to purchase nonfiction publisher Black Dog & Leventhal. The sale was finalized in January 2015, and Black Dog & Leventhal became an imprint of the Hachette Books publishing division.
In June 2014, the company in conjunction with Ingram Content Group, and Perseus Books Group, announced a three-way deal whereby Hachette would buy Perseus and then sell that company's client services businesses to Ingram. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. The deal was called off in August 2014. In March 2016, HBG announced that it had entered into a binding agreement to purchase the publishing division of The Perseus Books Group. Perseus's distribution business was sold to Ingram in a separate move. The sale was completed in April 2016, and the publishing business joined HBG as the Perseus Books publishing group.
In April 2016, HBG announced an agreement to create a joint venture with the Yen Press imprint and Japanese publisher Kadokawa. Yen Press became known as Yen Press LLC, and is no longer considered an imprint of HBG's Orbit publishing division.
Maps Hachette Book Group
Current publishing groups & imprints
Hachette Book Group operates a number of publishing brands aimed at different markets, and these brands themselves contain sub-imprints that are used to publish to an even more targeted audience. Imprints include:
Inactive imprints
Many imprints have been acquired by the Hachette Group and the companies that were merged to form the group; some are no longer active.
- Abacus
- Paperback Library (called the Warner Paperback Library after acquisition by Warner Communications in 1970)
- Questar Science Fiction
- Warner Aspect
- Reagan Arthur Books
- Jericho Books
- Business Plus
- Bulfinch Press (Bulfinch titles are now considered part of Little, Brown & Company)
- 5 Spot
- Weinstein Books: Formerly an imprint of Perseus Books, this publisher was shut down in October 2017 after multiple women accused its founder Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment.
See also
- The Big Five book publishers: Hachette, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and HarperCollins
References
External links
- Hachette Book Group website
Source of article : Wikipedia
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