2019 overview

2019 was a fine year driven by the momentum of our various activities in France and internationally, amply illustrating that we have the right business model and underscoring our ability to seize growth opportunities.

In a global publishing market characterised by an upswing in growth in France (up 1.3%)1 and continued expansion in the United States, the United Kingdom (up 2.4%)2 and Spain (up 1.1%)1, Lagardère Publishing delivered revenue of €2,384 million (including acquisitions), an increase of 2.8% on a like-for-like basis compared with 2018, and recurring EBIT of €220 million, up 10%3.
Hachette Livre’s sterling performances in France and Spain, and growth in Partworks and Mobile Games were the driving force behind the increase in our earnings.
In France, the autumn saw a slew of literary awards (Grand Prix du roman de l’Académie française, Médicis prize, Femina essay prize, Giono prize, Décembre prize, etc.), while Guillaume Musso held a firm grip on the two top spots on the bestseller list. At the same time, large-scale curriculum reform simultaneously affecting two senior secondary classes was reflected in excellent results for Hatier and Hachette Éducation, which consolidated their respective market shares.

In the United States, Hachette Book Group placed 211 titles in The New York Times bestseller list, 29 of which reached first place, and its authors won an array of literary awards. Two new imprints also emerged, Voracious at Little, Brown and Company, and Hachette Go at Hachette Books. Lastly, the arrival of publisher Lonely Planet as a distribution partner will allow Hachette Book Group to distribute roughly half the travel guides sold in the United States in the first half of 2020.

Elsewhere, 108 Hachette UK titles made it into The Sunday Times bestseller list in the United Kingdom, eight of which making it to the top spot. In addition, the e-book and audio formats once again contributed significantly to the overall performance. And the new Hachette UK distribution centre in Didcot was rated “Very Good” by BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method), a method for assessing the environmental performance of buildings.

In Spain, the division had a good year, with new programmes in six primary levels in Andalusia and the stellar performance of the latest Asterix album.
Partworks also experienced a fresh year of growth, with 92 new collections launched in 36 countries, thereby consolidating the division’s global number one position in that market.
Lastly, while sales of e-books contracted slightly in the United States, audio books continued to enjoy spectacular growth across all geographies. The proportion of digital activities grew year on year, accounting for 11.1% of Lagardère Publishing’s revenue in 2019.

1 Source: GfK (by value).
2 Source: Nielsen BookScan (by value).
3 2018 data restated for the retrospective application of IFRS 16.




Cover Camins d’Aigua (FR)

Leading positions

  • No. 1 publisher in France
  • No. 1 publisher of partworks worldwide
  • No. 1 book distributor in France
  • No. 2 publisher in the United Kingdom
  • No. 3 private-capital publisher in the trade and educational markets
  • No. 4 publisher in the United States

2019 Key dates

Roller Splat! game screenshot

  • 31 January
    Hachette Livre acquires Gigamic, a company specialising in developing, publishing and distributing board games.
  • 28 February
    The Roller Splat! game, developed by the Neon Play studio (Hachette Mobile Studios), takes first place in the charts of the world’s most downloaded games.
  • 2 April
    Release of La Vie secrète des écrivains by Guillaume Musso, at Calmann-Lévy.
  • 4 June
    Octopus Publishing Group, a Hachette UK subsidiary specialising in illustrated books, buys British publishing house Short Books.
  • 13 August
    Little, Brown and Company releases J.D. Salinger’s novels in digital format.
  • 14 October
    Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, authors at PublicAffairs (Hachette Book Group), receive the Nobel Prize in Economics.
    Raimon Portell, author at Barcanova (Hachette España), receives the Premio Nacional de Literatura Infantil y Juvenil 2019 for Camins d’aigua.
  • 23 October
    Hachette Livre acquires Blackrock Games, the third-largest distributor of board games in France.
  • 24 October
    Release of the 38th Asterix album, La Fille de Vercingétorix, at Éditions Albert René.
     

Focus

The new opus from Malcolm Gladwell at Little, Brown and Company and Hachette Audio: a new bestseller and exceptional audiobook

In September 2019, Malcolm Gladwell, who has already written five bestsellers (The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw and David and Goliath) at Little, Brown and Company, published his sixth opus: Talking to Strangers.
Like his previous works, the book immediately entered The New York Times bestseller list.
Meanwhile, the audiobook version – released simultaneously by Hachette Audio – mixes the voice of the author with those of the scientists and military psychologists interviewed, in addition to historical audio files, court re-enactments and fictional extracts. This version also came top of The New York Times audiobook bestsellers list, thereby demonstrating that the audiobook experience can join the ranks of the best podcasts.

www.hachettebookgroup.com

A good year for bestsellers

Hachette Livre occupied six of the top 10 places in the 2019 bestseller awards for France with the latest Asterix album (La Fille de Vercingétorix) published by Éditions Albert René, La jeune fille et la nuit and La Vie secrète des écrivains by Guillaume Musso, published by Le Livre de Poche and Calmann-Lévy respectively, as well as Changer l’eau des fleurs by Valérie Perrin, La Tresse by Laetitia Colombani and Il est grand temps de rallumer les étoiles by Virginie Grimaldi, published by Le Livre de Poche.

Source: GfK 2019 bestsellers (Trade).