Hachette Livre, owned by the diversified French company, Lagardère, recently announced its plans of setting up shop in India.
According to The Bookseller,
Hachette Livre is eyeing the lucrative Indian market, and is aiming to establish a presence there alongside its global competitors. The publishing giant currently has no operation in India, which represents the third-largest market for English-language books, with over 50 million people using English to communicate and 45% of books being published in English.Outlook Bibliofile adds,Hachette UK deputy c.e.o. Peter Roche said: "We are looking at opening in India. We're meeting everyone and I'm going over in November. We're the only group with no presence there--we sell in but we've got no one on the ground." He added: "India is the fastest-growing English-language market in the world."
Random House set up an operation in India in 2005, and earlier this year Simon & Schuster recruited Rahul Srivastava, formerly the India rep for Random House Inc, to set up an S&S office in Delhi. Cyrus Kheradi, vice-president and group sales director for S&S' international division, said: "I'm sure we'll be opening a full operation in India in the next five years."
Thomas Abraham, president of Penguin India, said the company had seen 27% growth over the past year. "Sales are going through the roof--we've sold 20,000 of Vikram Chandra in hardback in a month and a half." He added: "Hachette needs to have a presence. Over the last three years, growth has been huge."
... Hachette Livre, one of the world's largest publishing houses with its recently acquired Time Warner Books, is preparing to test the Indian waters early next year. Just to give you an idea of their size: the Hachette Book Group publishes about 500 adult books, 180 young adult books and 50 audio titles a year. Last year, the Hachette Book Group had a record 69 books on the NYT bestseller list, with 18 ranked #1.Hachette Livre is one of the few global publishing houses that publishes in multiple languages. Hachette Livre publishes in French, Spanish and English. Hachette Livre acquired Hodder Headline the 4th largest British publisher in 2004 and Time Warner Book Group, the 5th largest US trade publisher in early 2006. It had 2005 revenues of 2.1 billion Euros (including revenues from Time Warner Book Group), with operating margins of about 11.5% according to a recent Lagardère report.
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