Parent company | Hachette Livre |
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Founded | 2006 |
Country of origin | United States |
Headquarters location | New York City, New York |
Key people | Michael Pietsch (CEO) |
Imprints | Grand Central Publishing Little, Brown and Company Little, Brown Books for Young Readers Hachette Books Jimmy! Hachette Nashville Orbit Hachette Audio |
Official website | hachettebookgroup |
Hachette Book Group (HBG) is a publishing company owned by Hachette Livre, the largest publishing company in France, and the third largest trade and educational publisher in the world. Hachette Livre is a wholly owned subsidiary of Lagardère Group. HBG was formed when Hachette Livre purchased the Time Warner Book Group from Time Warner on March 31, 2006. Its headquarters are located at 1290 Avenue of the Americas, Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Hachette is considered one of the big-five publishing companies, along with Holtzbrinck/Macmillan, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster. Each year HBG publishes around 800 adult books, 200 young adult and children's books and 300 audio books.
The earliest publisher to eventually become part of the Hachette Book Group was Little, Brown and Company, founded in 1837, acquired by Time Inc. in 1968.
Warner Communications had acquired the Paperback Library in 1970 to form Warner Books. In 1982, CBS Publications sold off Popular Library to Warner. In April 1985, Warner Books relaunched Popular Library starting out with five other books plus the reprint of Question of Upbringing continuing each month with the follow volumes from A Dance to the Music of Time series by Anthony Powell. Also, two books would be issued per month from Popular's new imprint, Questar, for science fiction.
Time Warner was formed in 1989 by the merger of Time and Warner. Publisher Macdonald & Co. was bought in 1992 to become part of the Time Warner Book Group UK, and in 1996 the various branches merged to become Time Warner Trade Publishing, later renamed as Time Warner Book Group. In 2003, Time Warner attempted to sell the Book Group but failed to get high enough bids. In March 2006, Time Warner completed the sale of Book Group to Lagardère, which placed it under its Hachette Livre book publishing arm. Warner Books subsidiary was renamed Grand Central Publishing, which launched a more literary imprint, Twelve, under former Random House editor in chief Jonathan Karp. On February 5, 2010, Hachette announced that it would adopt an agency pricing model for its e-books.