Focus

Hachette Book Group: Publishing Innovator of the Year

At the 2012 Publishing Business Conference & Expo, Hachette Book Group (HBG) won the prize for Publishing Innovator of the Year, awarded by Publishing Executive and Book Business magazines.

To justify its decision, Book Business cited HBG’s innovative solutions for eliminating moiré patterns in digital readers, digital pre-formatting to speed up the sending of fi les to digital platforms, the creation of a hub – Hachette Digital Platform – and the adoption of a 100% digital editorial process. “Hachette Book Group,” writes the magazine, “won the award in recognition of its avant-garde approach in terms of production, collection and analysis of digital data.” Ralph Muns, Chief Information Officer at HBG, comments, “Our aim is to offer consumers the best reading experience possible.”

• more info at www.hachettebookgroup.com

Hachette Livre: the choice of J.K. Rowling

J.K. Rowling has selected Little, Brown Book Group (UK), Little, Brown and Company (US) and Grasset (France), three subsidiaries of Hachette Livre, to publish her first novel for adults, The Casual Vacancy.

In an interview with UK newspaper The Guardian, the author stated: “I had a meeting with David Shelley^*, who’s now my editor, without him knowing there was a book. So we just had a conversation, and I could tell he was really on my wavelength.
So then I sort of vaguely mentioned what I might have, without saying it’s virtually finished. There was no auction. It was just a great way to find an editor!”

^*David Shelley is Publisher at Little, Brown Book Group.

• more info at www.hachette.com