You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Perseus sale to Hachette Book Group completed
Hachette Book Group (HBG) has completed its acquisition of the Perseus Book Group’s publishing business.
Last month, the Bookseller reported that HBG had announced plans to buy the business in the US, 18 months after the original acquisition deal fell through.
The deal includes the sale of nine Perseus imprints - Basic, Public Affairs, Running Press, Avalon Travel, Seal Press, academic textbook publisher Westview Press, the Weinstein Books and Nation Books - comprising of around 6,000 titles.
Michael Pietsch, Hachette Book Group c.e.o., said: “We’re extremely pleased to bring Perseus Books to Hachette Book Group, and to join their distinctive and highly respected publishing program with ours. This acquisition is a major step forward for Hachette. It adds to our portfolio of publishers a new program of great diversity and strength, and advances our strategic goals of overall growth, and the expansion of our nonfiction and backlist catalogs. We’re looking forward to welcoming our Perseus colleagues and their authors to Hachette, and eager to begin collaborating and growing in exciting new ways.”
Perseus will now become a "major new publishing division" at HGB under the continued leadership of longstanding Perseus executive Susan Weinberg, who will join HBG’s executive management board as senior vice president and publisher of Perseus Books.
Weinberg said: “We’re very proud of the vibrant, creative and award-winning programs we’ve built across all of our imprints. We are excited to join Hachette in their long-term commitment to publish great books well.”
Hachette first announced its plans to buy Perseus in June 2014, although the deal was called off the following August after the companies failed to reach “agreement on everything necessary to close the transaction”.
Meanwhile, the sale of Perseus' distribution arm to Ingram Content Group has also been confirmed. Perseus Distribution Services handles the distribution for many UK independent publishers, as a result Faber Factory will now use CoreSource, the Ingram digital asset management and distribution system. As part of the new arrangement, Faber now owns Faber Factory outright.
