The Hachette Book Group had a fairly successful 2011 with their digital division seeing over 130% net growth. This figures include both ebooks and audiobooks which are quickly becoming important to the company instead as an afterthought.
Hachette saw 22% of their entire revenue come exclusively from digital content such as ebooks and audiobooks which is a far cry from 8% in 2011. The New York Times last year started tracking ebook bestsellers in addition to the proverbial print content and Hachette saw quite the number of its books contained within. Over 62 different books have been proclaimed as bestsellers and feature novels by Ellen Degeneres and Michael Moore.
Part of the reason why Hachette as an entity including all its imprints did not see even more growth was mainly attributed to two deciding factors. RedGroup in Australia went bankrupt was one of the huge examples cited during an investors conference and also the Borders collapse.
Michael Kozlowski is the Editor in Chief of Good e-Reader. He has been writing about audiobooks and e-readers for the past ten years. His articles have been picked up by major and local news sources and websites such as the CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and Verge.