Hachette Livre appoints Valentine Laude as Business Development Officer

In her new role as Hachette Livre’s Business Development Officer, Valentine Laude will head a division comprising the Sales and Key Accounts Department for France, Livre Diffusion Services (LDS), the distribution subsidiaries in French-speaking countries (Belgium, Switzerland and Canada), Hachette Livre International (overseas exports in publishing and distribution), our Ivoirian subsidiary NEI-Ceda, and Hachette Antoine, our joint venture in Lebanon. She will be a member of the Executive Committee for France.

Valentine Laude had served as Key Accounts Director for France at Hachette Livre since 2021, managing and developing the Group’s business with major brands and booksellers.

Background: A 2001 graduate of ISEP engineering school, Ms. Laude began her career in auditing at PricewaterhouseCoopers, before joining Coca-Cola European Partners, where she spent 15 years in finance, sales and business development. Over the course of her career, Ms. Laude has overseen large client portfolios in the mass-market retail, specialized retail, and entertainment sectors. She later went on to work in the start-up world, serving as General Manager France at World is a Village. She joined the Hachette Livre group in August 2021 as Key Accounts Director for France.

Hachette Livre is a subsidiary of Lagardère SA and the world’s third-largest mainstream publishing group (trade and educational). With revenue of €2,748 million in 2022, it is the market leader in France, number two in the UK, third in Spain and fourth in the US (in trade publishing). The Group comprises over 200 imprints which together publish around 15,000 new titles each year in a dozen languages (mainly French, English and Spanish). It covers all segments of the mainstream publishing market: general fiction, nonfiction, paperbacks, children’s and YA books, illustrated books, travel guides, textbooks, study guides and partworks.
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