HarperCollins Germany has acquired trade publisher Gräfe und Unzer from media company Ganske Group, pending the approval of the German anti-trust authorities.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but by moving the new acquisition under the umbrella of HarperCollins’ existing German business Verlagsgruppe HarperCollins (Hamburg), the US publishing giant has stated that the size of its German business will more than double.
Better known in the German book industry as GU, the new acquisition is a non-fiction powerhouse with a strong content pool and a high level of brand awareness, adding to HarperCollins’ German portfolio in areas such as cooking, healthy eating, family, gardening, pets, nature and travel. The last known sales figure was €49.3m in 2022, down 7.3%. While Verlagsgruppe HarperCollins is based in Hamburg, GU will continue to be based in Munich.
As part of the deal Isar Sales Partner (ISP) is also moving under the umbrella of HarperCollins in Germany. The sales cooperation was founded in the spring by GU to not only manage all its own print and digital sales and logistics, but to assist a growing number of publishing partners with an accumulated market volume of more than €100m.
According to Brian Murray, president and c.e.o. of HarperCollins Publishers (New York), Germany “is one of our strongest markets in the international portfolio and one where we see tremendous growth opportunities”. The acquisition of GU “will allow us to increase our market share and position us for continued growth in the market”.
Verlagsgruppe HarperCollins was set up in 2014 and has been led by managing director Jürgen Welte since 2019. Its imprints are a mixture of US (HarperCollins, Ecco, HarperAudio) and, increasingly, German-originated imprints (Nagel und Kimche, reverie, Schneiderbuch, Dragonfly) which produce around 300 new titles per year, plus 400 press products with more than 1,000 series novels published by romance specialist Cora.
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