Good performances at its English-language divisions helped to increase first-quarter sales at Lagardère Publishing to €576 million (about $617 million at current exchange rates), a 1.1% gain over 2023.
Sales at Hachette Book Group rose 3.4% over the first period of 2023. Commenting on results for the U.S., Hachette Book Group and Hachette UK CEO David Shelley called the U.S. performance a “good start” to the year. He cited “impressive” results at Hachette Audio, Orbit, and Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, which benefitted from a lift in sales for Vashti Harrison's picture book Big, which won the 2024 Caldecott Medal. Individual title standouts included Liz Cheney’s Oath and Honor, Abby Jimenez’s Just for the Summer, and Carleigh Bodrug's PlantYou: Scrappy Cooking.
In the U. K., revenue rose 4.8%, led by the adult trade division where backlist sales performed well, including sales for Fourth Wing and Iron Flame, the first two volumes of the Empyrean trilogy by Rebecca Yarros.
Elsewhere, sales in Lagardère’s biggest market, France, fell 4.8%, and sales in Spain and Latin America dipped 1%. Digital sales continued to improve throughout the group, particularly for audiobooks where digital audio accounted for 6.7% of total revenue in the quarter, up from 5.2% a year ago.
