Lagardère SCA, the parent company of the Big 6 publisher Hachette, released its quarterly financial statements yesterday. eBooks now amounted to over a fifth of revenue for Hachette US.
Even though revenue was down 10% for the publishing division, this is still a major milepost. The future has arrived, and that was a little faster than I expected.
The figures get only more impressive when you look at the division as whole. eBook revenue was up 88% over Q1 2010. Trust me, that is impressive; it includes markets where eBooks are just getting started.
via Lagardère SCA
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Imagine how much they could make if they did not stick to their anal-retentive policy of only distributing e-books to the US of A. They did not sell many an e-book to me that I would happily pay.
It’s also the first “proof” we have that the Agency 5 actions in April 2010 were the correct ones to drive higher profit. Hachette reported 22% of US sales were e-books … which is considerably higher than Random House, the lone Agency 6 holdout till March 2011, which reported merely 15% of sales were ebooks. Since sales = revenue ($$$, not units of books sold), Hachette ended up in a more profitable position vis-à-vis Random House. No wonder Random House caved in the end.
Can’t argue with that.