Hachette UK Restructures

Hachette UK has restructured, with a new trade publishing operations unit over­seeing all imprints, headed by Ben Groves-Raines (COO of Orion and Little, Brown UK) as publish­ing operations director, reporting to Hachette dep­uty CEO Richard Kitson. Lucy Hale (deputy CEO of Hodder & Stoughton, Headline, Quercus, and John Murray Press) has “decided to leave,” and her position has been eliminated. The managing direc­tors of the trade publishing imprints have joined the board, with Jon Butler of Quercus, Mari Evans of Headline, and Nick Davies of John Murray report­ing directly to David Shelly, CEO of Hachette UK. Hodder and Stoughton has a “new growth plan,” including a new division run by H&S CEO Jamie Hodder-Williams to “cater for the huge appetite for stories in the widest variety of forms – from pure digital ebooks to audiobooks, podcasts and new forms of storytelling.”

Harper UK has enrolled hundreds of backlist ti­tles in Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program (a sub­scription service that allows unlimited reading of enrolled ebooks for a monthly fee). A spokesperson said, “We are testing participation… to understand how readers use the service and to ensure we are exploring all possible avenues for our authors. We believe there is opportunity to drive sales through Kindle Unlimited and à la carte sales by allowing readers as much choice as possible in how they ac­cess content.”

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