2010 has been a turbulent year for Hardie Grant Egmont. The Australian Children’s book publisher began the year by acquiring the small but highly respected competitor Little Hare. This broadened Hardie Grant Egmont’s book offering from ‘books that kids want to read’ to include the beautiful and traditional children’s books from the Little Hare list that resonate with parents and grandparents. Amidst this excitement, Hardie Grant Egmont was affected when two of the major book chains in Australia and New Zealand were hit by financial difficulties.

“It cost us hugely on sales, and it will affect the result this year. But it made us remember, that we needed to refocus our strategy and get market access to more than just the book chains and discount department stores that we used to focus on. We also need access to the smaller independent book shops and the supermarkets. We cannot rely on only one part of the book market,” says Sales and Marketing Director Natasha Besliev.

The perfect match
“We knew there was a huge potential in better distribution of the Little Hare titles into the accounts Hardie Grant Egmont has strong relationships with - the book chains for example. We believe in a 20 percent growth for the list in 2010-11. But we underestimated what the reputation of Little Hare could do for the more modern Hardie Grant Egmont titles in the independent book shops. The result is a broader market access for all our titles,” says Natasha Besliev.

Top five
The goal for Hardie Grant Egmont is a top 5 position among children’s book publishers in Australia and New Zealand. And Natasha Besliev and her colleagues know it will take more than a broader market access to reach the goal.

“We need the right rights, especially from the international authors. Therefore we need to continue the good work in the English Language Network in Egmont. When we say to the authors: We can give your book a home in the USA, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom we get the buying power to pitch for the best international rights. For us in Australia it means that we get access to great US and UK titles that we could not buy alone,” says Natasha Besliev.

First movers
The last leg in the Hardie Grant Egmont strategy is to be first mover on children’s eBooks in Australia and New Zealand. Since August all Hardie Grant Egmont new title releases are published simultaneously as eBooks. Add to this the backlist of Hardie Grant Egmont titles, and there are more than 130 eBook titles  vailable today.

“We want to be among the first publishers to be present in the digital market and be able to react when sales take off. We are also working to find out how the eBook can help the physical book and vice versa in exciting and engaging readers,” says Natasha Besliev and mentions that they do not have trustworthy sales numbers yet.