Digital Strategies
Computers and mobile devices have become individual points of sale, providing access to an infinite choice of books and content, from new releases and backlist titles to long out-of-print works. Digital is diversifying the experience of reading and learning, opening up fertile new ground for talent scouting by publishers and providing authors and illustrators with new opportunities for expression. Hachette Livre has been in the vanguard of the book industry’s response to the multiple innovations generated by these technological breakthroughs. It has adapted to emerging consumer behaviors and new forms of reading. At the same time, as custodian of its authors’ fiduciary interests, Hachette Livre is careful to ensure that each book’s true value is recognized.
Meeting the Full Range of eBook Readers’ Expectations
As early as 2006, Hachette Livre was one of the first publishers to start digitizing its catalogs. The Group has a thoroughly up-to-date infrastructure, ranging from rights management systems to digital warehousing, enabling it to provide its titles in digital format on all sales platforms. In response to the boom in digital book reading equipment (tablets, ereaders, smartphones), Hachette Livre optimizes the rights granted to it by its authors and offers an appealing range of ebooks to meet reader demand worldwide. In 2017, Hachette UK acquired Bookouture, an innovative digital publisher and leader in the books for the general public market.
The catalogs of Hachette Livre’s publishing houses are available on all ebook sales platforms, including international pure plays, the big national chains and independent booksellers. In just a decade, Hachette has sold nearly 100 million copies worldwide, and everywhere, Hachette Livre is at the top of the list of best-selling ebooks. In 2019, digital offerings (digital books and audiobooks) accounted for 11.1% of Hachette Livre’s overall revenue.
More than 100,000 titles are available in digital format.
Fulfilling Authors’ Expectations
As part of this initiative, Hachette Livre has taken steps to secure the long-term future of the book trade by ensuring copyright compliance and sustainable pricing. To protect its authors’ interests, Hachette Livre has implemented a large-scale, automated anti-piracy solution.
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Hachette Book Group Author Portal
The Hachette Book Group Author Portal is a best-inclass, richly featured platform that provides effortless and open communication between authors and their HBG support “family,” giving easy access to sales information, subsidiary rights details, HBG news and a wide array of resources.
Enhancing the Reading Experience
Publishers are keen to build gateways between paper books, to which readers remain attached, and the new possibilities offered by digital media.
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larousse.fr (Larousse)
Thanks to its encyclopedia, dictionaries and cooking page (cuisine.larousse.fr), the larousse.fr website is ranked among the top 150 French sites by a number of indicators (Alexa®, SEMrush®, SimilarWeb®).
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Digital books with enhanced content (Hachette Book Group)
Recent digital books from Michael Connelly, Elin Hilderbrand and David Baldacci include web pages featuring the very latest marketing content, including extracts from forthcoming books and links for pre-ordering titles; readers can also sign up to receive newsletters, read author biographies and visit each author’s social media accounts.
Detecting Talent in New Media
On social networks, blogs and websites, aspiring writers can exercise their talent and test their ideas with readers. Publishers scan this new media landscape and spot budding authors; many books have been published via this route.
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Hachette Romans Hosts a Major Interactive Writing Contest
Hachette Romans has announced a writing contest on the topic of commitment. Readers will be invited to choose their favorite from a preselected shortlist of five titles; a jury will then select the winner from the two titles that receive the most votes. The winner will see their work published by Hachette Romans.
Spreading a Culture of Innovation
The aim of the Hachette Innovation Program (HIP) is to accelerate the Group’s digital transformation by spreading a culture of innovation throughout the organization. Based in San Francisco and Paris, the HIP team acts as a gateway to innovation ecosystems and start-ups. It tracks developments and reports on innovations in the publishing industry and analyzes trends and breakthroughs with the potential to affect our business.
Defining Open Technology Standards
In support of compatibility and accessibility, Hachette Livre is defining and developing open technology standards. It is active in international cross-disciplinary organizations such as the Readium Foundation and the European Digital Reading Lab (EDR Lab) as well as W3C and Publishing@W3C.
Supporting Evolving Educational Practices
Drawing on its long experience in educational publishing, Hachette Livre is taking advantage of the opportunities offered by digital technology to enhance its tools and resources aimed at students and teachers in elementary, secondary and higher education. All the school resource publishers in the United Kingdom, France and Spain are developing innovative solutions for both classwork and homework, in line with government policies promoting the use of digital media in education. From multimedia digital versions of textbooks to enriched classroom content to game-changing self-assessment solutions, educational content is becoming more diverse, personalized and dynamic. The Group’s publishing houses are perfectly prepared to support evolving educational practices in Europe.
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Educapital Partnership
Hachette Livre is the strategic shareholder in Educapital, the first venture capital fund in Europe that is specifically aimed at investing in start-ups in the field of education and training. This investment partners Hachette Livre with digital pure plays.
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KWYK (educational imprints in France)
KWYK is a website that offers interactive exercises in mathematics, physics, chemistry and French. It allows teachers to create personalized review sets and exercises for their students and lets them keep track of each student’s work, progress and room for improvement through individualized dashboards. This innovative adaptive learning solution for teachers is already being used by tens of thousands of students in France.
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GEV (Anaya)
GEV is a test generator for use by teachers who register at the Anaya website. It draws on an extensive and continuously updated database of questions and answers tailored to regional needs within Spain. GEV gives teachers wide latitude in selecting criteria and customizing the results.
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My Rising Stars (Rising Stars)
My Rising Stars is a service for teachers that brings together Rising Stars’ online resources into a single, personal, online dashboard. In just one click, teachers can access all the ebooks, videos and interactive resources that their school has purchased, along with a wealth of free content that targets their areas of interest.
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Dynamic Learning
Dynamic Learning is an innovative online subscription service that supports teachers and learners at school and at home. The platform contains expertly authored, quality content including interactive learning resources, lesson planning tools and self-marking tests and assessments designed to support students aged from four to eighteen. Accessed by over 400,000 learners across 150 countries in 2019 alone, Dynamic Learning is saving teachers time and helping students reach their potential across the globe.
Mobile Apps
Hachette Livre has gained a foothold in the mobile app market. This strategy consists of combining the imprints’ editorial know-how with the digital skills of pure plays and capitalizing on the growing consumption of games and content on tablets and smartphones. Three companies have joined the Hachette Livre Group as part of the new Hachette Mobile Studios unit:
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Brainbow
Brainbow, the U.K. mobile app company known for Peak, a fun, subscription-based brain-training app. Peak has been downloaded over 15 million times since it was launched and was named Best App in 2014 by Apple and Best Self-Improvement App in 2015 and 2016 by Google Play. Hachette Livre has a majority interest in Brainbow.
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Neon Play
Neon Play, one of the U.K.’s leading mobile game development studios. Neon Play has created over 30 games, including Paper Glider, Flick Football and Traffic Panic London that together account for over 60 million downloads.
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IsCool Entertainment
IsCool Entertainment, a mobile game development studio at the frontier between competitive and casual gaming. Games in its portfolio include Wordox, Is Cool, Belote Multiplayer, Crazy 8 and Super Kiwi Castle Run.