Hachette UK acquires ebook publisher Bookouture

In the UK, Hachette has acquired independent ebook publisher Bookouture in order to share expertise between the two companies, reports the Bookseller.

Bookouture was founded four years ago by former Harlequin marketing controller Oliver Rhodes, and sells a high volume of ebooks at low prices.

Rhodes will join Hachette UK in the newly created role of digital publisher, while continuing to run Bookouture, which will retain its London office and 16 staff.

Hachette UK chief executive Tim Hely Hutchinson said Bookouture ‘probably knows more about selling ebooks than any other publisher in the world’. ‘We are both trying to maximise our authors’ sales, so we will learn important marketing techniques from each other. We are experimenting more than ever before and this involves both raising and lowering prices to find the optimum point of revenue generation, which can vary literally from day to day in each of the market we serve.’

Hely Hutchinson said that Bookouture’s business model would be ‘ring-fenced’, and that the acquisition did not signal a move away from the agency model for the publisher.

Category: International news