PR: Hachette acquires French manga publisher

Well, here’s a surprise: Hachette Book Group USA, the parent company of Kurt Hassler and Rich Johnson’s new imprint, Yen Press, has acquired the French manga publisher PIKA. Exciting synergy is sure to result! I checked the site, and they don’t seem to have any global manga, and most of their titles seem to be licensed in the U.S. already, so I’m curious what they are bringing to the mix. Perhaps just more cash, as Yen sends its books to France?

UPDATE: Well, reading the press release more closely, it does look like they have some European titles. Developing…

UPDATE 2: Chloe has some thoughts.

HACHETTE LIVRE PARENT COMPANY LAGARDERE
ANNOUNCES ACQUISITION OF PIKA IN FRANCE

PARIS (February 28, 2007) — On the heels of the recent announcement regarding Hachette Book Group USA’s graphic novel imprint Yen Press’ first acquisitions comes another exciting announcement from Hachette’s parent company Lagardère. Today, Lagardère announces that Hachette Livre is acquiring PIKA, the third largest manga publisher in the French market. The acquisition of PIKA will also contribute to manga businesses across Hachette Livre, including Yen Press.

In France, the manga market has shown a strong growth over the past four years and represents one third of the comics market. PIKA, with a 12% market share and a catalog of approximately 600 titles, including a number of European-created titles, was founded by Alain Kahn in 2000. Together with publisher Pierre Valls, they both developed the business to make PIKA the #3 publisher in the French manga market.

Hachette Livre, as well as PIKA, plan to further develop partnerships with Japanese manga publishers.

For Hachette Livre, the acquisition represents a new phase in the development of its graphic novel businesses, which will be enriched by this partnership and target a new customer base with this growing genre.

Lagardère owns Hachette Livre, which is the parent company of Hachette Book Group USA.

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Comments

  1. I’m gonna point out that Pika Edition produces lovely book…. I have their XXXholic [1+2, my others are english] and all my Card Captor Sakura books are from them [complete with Clow Card-style character bookmarks :)], and these are gorgeous books with great dust jackets. I hope their production choices influence Yen Press in some way :) They publish a lot of CLAMP’s works in france, and their ties to japanese publishers will be pretty helpful