Editions de la Martiniere lays off 10 staff

Editions de La Martinière (EDLM), one of the publishers in the group of the same name, is laying off 10 of its 40 employees, just four years after a first wave of 19 redundancies, the French trade publication Livres Hebdo has reported.

The illustrated book publisher was the genesis of the group that was created by chairman and c.e.o. Hervé de La Martinière in 1992. The group now ranks among the top 10 houses in France and includes the flagship Le Seuil, which it acquired in 2004, Editions de l’Olivier, Abrams in the United States and Knesebeck in Germany.

EDLM boss Patrick Gambache is stepping down from his post to become digital advisor to the group chief and the number of new titles published each year will continue to decline from 200 in 2012.

The EDLM website now puts the annual output of new titles at 120 and the catalogue at 900. These include the bestselling Earth seen from the Sky by Yann Arthus-Bernard, which was released in 1999 and sold more than three million copies in 21 countries, and Cakes de Sophie by Sophie Dudemaine. The latter sold one million copies, an exceptional number for a recipe book.

Meanwhile, the group also sold its distributor Volumen to Editis in 2015.