Sales at Hachette Book Group, Lagardère Publishing’s U.S. division, “grew strongly” in the third quarter, company officials said in an earnings report this week. The company attributed the gains to a new Malcolm Gladwell novel, Revenge of the Tipping Point and strong backlist sales of Freida McFadden's The Housemaid. The children and young adult segment’s also had a good period, with sales particularly strong for Peter Brown's The Wild Robot series.
HBG’s quarter also benefited once again from increasing digital sales, Lagardère reported. Gains in e-book and digital audio boosted e-books’ share of companywide revenue to 10.2% of all sales from 9% a year ago and digital audio sales accounted for 5.9% of sales, up from 4.1% in the third quarter of 2023.
In the U.K., revenue was up slightly, supported notably by "good momentum in General Literature with the Rebecca Yarros, Ana Huang and Freida McFadden book series, in both backlist and frontlist and across all formats."
The latest results come after the company in July reported big gains in sales and profits in its book publishing division in the second quarter.
Overall, however, sales at Lagardère Publishing slipped to €765 million in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, 2024 from €767 million in the comparable quarter in 2023. But despite the small quarterly dip, revenue through September grew 3% over 2023 to €2.07 billion.
The quarterly announcement also noted that Jean-Christophe Thiery was named deputy CEOof the Hachette Livre group replacing Stéphanie Ferran. The change was made at the recommendation of chairman and CEO Arnaud Lagardère.
