'We Do Not Believe In Cutting The List Just Because The Environment Is Difficult'

The most recent international player to enter the Indian book publishing market has been Hachette India, the India division of France headquartered Hachette Livre – which is also part of Lagardère Media of Group Lagardère in France. Despite the fact that the business milieu worldwide is not quite conducive to roaring success at the moment Hachette India, which was officially inaugurated in May 2008, has enthusiastically launched forth into business in India this November. On this occasion Chairman and CEO of Hachette Livre Arnaud Nourry, discusses Hachette's business prospects in India, tackling competition here and presents an overall appraisal of the publishing arena in conversation with BW Online's Alokita Datta.

What made you decide to come to India at this point in time to launch Hachette?
I would rather explain why we didn't come to India earlier. It, of course, answers the same question. Until about five years ago, Hachette was mainly a French publisher and there was no reason for a French publisher to enter the Indian market. French is not something that would profit here in India. Then, in 2003, we started transforming Hachette from a French company into a truly international company with a focus on the English language — first, with the acquisition of Hodder Headline in 2004 and then, in 2006, with the acquisition of Time Warner. It was in 2006, that we found ourselves big enough, strong enough in English to decide to enter the Indian market. I sent a colleague here in India to review markets and it took us just the time to attract Thomas (Thomas Abraham; Managing Director, Hachette India) and then for him to hire other people. India is a key market for us.

The publishing scene in India is dominated by a number of established international publishers. How do you plan to influence the market?
The big guys may have been here longer, but we are the No. 2 publishers worldwide, so there is absolutely no reason for us not to be in India. The creation of the group is quite recent. Now, with our size — our catalogues from Britain and America — we have all the skills, the talent and the authors to be successful here.

Do you have a time frame in mind, by the end of which you plan to accomplish business success in India?
No, we don't. Hachette was created in 1826, a very long time ago. We are not entering the Indian market for a trial but, in fact, because it will be bigger than Australia in titles and books. It is a fast growing market. Whether we have to pay back in 2-3 years or 5 years, I don't care as long as I am sure we are moving in the right direction. Our sales in Britain to India have increased by 40 per cent since we started the business which is a huge improvement and is already an achievement. We may decide to publish more, maybe enter education in 2 or 3 years and again it doesn't matter when we pay back…
 

FAST FACTS

Name: Arnaud Nourry Date of Birth: 7 January 1961 Degree in Master of Sociology of Organizations, obtained in 1983 at the University of Paris Dauphine. Joined HACHETTE LIVRE, as a special adviser of President Jean-Louis LISIMACHIO in 1990 Appointed CEO of HACHETTE LIVRE in June 2003 Incorporated part of VIVENDI UNIVERSAL PUBLISHING into HACHETTE LIVRE and then proceeded to the acquisition of HODDER HEADLINE in Britain in 2004 propelling the group to the fifth largest in the world Established HACHETTE LIVRE on the American market with the aquisition of of TIME WARNER in 2006

Are there any plans then to venture into academic publishing, which dominates about 70 per cent of publishing in India? I believe you do have dictionaries under your publication.
We have dictionaries which are monolingual or bilingual and are, by far, the market leaders in Dictionary in France and Spain. We are No. 3 in the UK, No. 2 in Mexico, we are into education in many countries and we love to deal with books in trade and education because it helps keep a balance. Ideally I would love to bring education (publication) in India too. But we have no plan at this stage and plan to do things step by step or else we will lose north, as we say in French!

With regard to the ongoing financial crisis, how have sales been affected in the West?
What we see now in both America and Britain is that customers still want and buy the big books by big names. They sell like crazy. We are happy to have books like these in America, particularly Stephanie Meyer who is a huge phenomenon. When you go a little down the list of bestsellers you find that the sales are soft. Of course when you look at overall regional sales, you see that the market is down. The bulk of the sales is soft.

In France, the markets were flat until last year. In any case, I feel the book markets in developed countries will be down this year by 3 or 4 per cent, which is not a huge decrease. Books are not expensive — they are not as exposed as television, cars or big investments. So, the difference does not tend to be that sharp. The year 2007 was the year of Harry Potter the world over and that accounted for about 1.5 per cent of the market. Being down 4 or 5 per cent without Harry Potter in the crisis seems all right.

Have you thought about introducing changes in your policy for commissioning authors in the wake of ongoing financial crisis?
No, we would never do that. The way we are organised is highly decentralised and our publishing decisions come through our publishers, and this is their decision. We are serious about the way we manage our company. We are losing money because of the market crisis but we tend to be more prudent in the way hire people and are not cutting our publishing business. If we do that we are not only cutting the sales of this year but also the future. We are a long-term publication and do not believe in cutting the list just because the environment is difficult.

What are the different imprints that you plan to bring to India?
There are two different areas in our project. The immediate one is to import all the books that we published in the English language which would, in turn, come with their imprints. They include Hodder Headline, John Murray, Little, Brown, etc., about 20-30 brands, or more. As far as the second aspect of publishing in English in India is concerned, our intention is to mainly publish on the Hachette India brand because we could elaborate more about brand recognition which is something we plan to build.

Do you have any plans, going by your business model, of acquiring any local publishing house(s) in India?
No, we have decided to grow organically in building our trade prices and I think this is the right way. We can bring all the different catalogues, we have talent since we have signed many authors and have also hired publishers who are very committed and well educated and motivated. So, we do not need to acquire any company and I love markets where there is such diversity. When we think about entering education, it is too early to say anything right now. I think we need to follow a step-by-step approach and are quite happy with what we are doing right now. The company is changing every year with new people joining us and authors being signed. The beginning of the company is very important so we want to be successful with our first authors and then the next. If we do everything at the same time it is not going to work. After the completion of our first projects all options will be considered, whether we have to go through an acquisition or start from scratch.