BPI, the business information and magazine publishing subsidiary of the Dutch group VNU, has bought the British company Whitaker, publisher of the Bookseller, for an undisclosed sum.
The sale includes Whitaker Business Publishing, publisher of the British book trade journal, the new Rights Report newsletter and Information Age, as well as Whitaker Information Services, which operates the International ISBN agency in the U.K., TeleOrdering; Bibliographic Services; and BookTrack, which monitors point-of-sale book information in the U.K.
BPI owns several business magazines, including Billboard, Adweek, Mediaweek, Hollywood Reporter and Backstage, and last year acquired a 60% stake in SoundScan, which supplies sales chart information to Billboard and, through its offshoot BookScan, has also been targeting the book industry to supply point-of-sale information, as BookTrack d s in the U.K.
Martin Whitaker, Whitaker's group managing director, who will now report to Howard Lander, executive v-p of BPI, told PW he thought there was "tremendous scope" in the U.S. for the kind of services BookTrack and TeleOrdering offer. BookTrack now works with 35 out of 40 of the major U.K. publishers, and TeleOrdering has 80% of the electronic book ordering market, and he "would love to expand that service to American customers." Whitaker added, "The key thing today is that book markets are international, and it would be great to be able to combine U.S. and European sales data." Meanwhile, the company works "closely and well" on bibliographical data with R.R. Bowker in the U.S., and that relationship will continue.
Two years ago Whitaker said he wanted the company, which has annual sales of about $17.7 million, to double in size. He says the new deal has been made with a company that shares his high-growth strategy.
Lander told PW the acquisition "really broadens our vision for our coverage of the creative industries," particularly in terms of the relations between books and other media. "Whitaker's strategy mirrors our own in terms of databases driving publications." He said BookTrack and BookScan will continue to develop separately, and added another perspective: as a result of the deal, SoundScan could become a presence in its field in the U.K. There are no plans so far for a Whitaker physical presence in the U.S., he said, though "they can now take advantage of our resources here." (BPI has a small editorial, advertising and sales office in London.)
Jonathan Nowell, managing director of Whitaker Business Publishing, also spoke with enthusiasm to PW of the "key synergies" in the deal, particularly in the world of entertainment publishing. There are certain synergies in the book trade, too, he said, and previous attempts to interest American customers in BookTrack and TeleOrdering would now be considerably strengthened. The purchase had given Whitaker a "real base" to break into the U.S. market, which had been difficult before.
BPI had sales in its last fiscal year of $200 million. Its Dutch parent, VNU, has annual sales of about $2.8 billion.
