Hachette UK reports 17.5% sales hike in fourth quarter

This content has been archived. It may no longer be accurate or relevant.

From The Bookseller:

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, both published by Little, Brown, helped Hachette UK to see “strong” 17.5% sales growth in the fourth quarter of 2016.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which in the third quarter drove Hachette UK sales up 30% after its release at the end of July 2016, was credited by Hachette’s parent company Lagardère in bolstering business growth for the whole publishing division in 2016 by 11% while Lagardère Publishing’s revenues in 2016 rose 2.5% like-for-like to €2,264m (2015: €2,206m).

However Hachette UK c.e.o. Tim Hely Hutchinson commented that the “outstanding” final quarter of 2016 was thanks to “sales across the board”.

Revenues for Lagardère Publishing in the fourth quarter (end September to end December 2016) were down by 1.4% at €619m like-for-like (2015 Q4: €631m) “as expected” owing to an unfavourable comparison effect linked to the success of Astérix in the fourth quarter of 2015 that was only partly offset by the United Kingdom’s “good performance”. Sales in French division were down 6.4%, while US sales were down 12.4%.

Link to the rest at The Bookseller

2 thoughts on “Hachette UK reports 17.5% sales hike in fourth quarter”

  1. I’m surprised the publisher hasn’t already transformed J.K. Rowlings into a Patterson-type writing team.

  2. If I understand either writer correctly, they each have things arranged as best suits them. Rowling may be happiest working solo; Patterson may well be most at home as the lead member of a team. I used to read his stuff; IMO his quality of storytelling tanked a long time ago.

Comments are closed.