[2] Hachette is considered one of the "big five" publishing companies, along with Holtzbrinck/Macmillan, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster.
[4] The earliest publisher to eventually become part of the Hachette Book Group was Little, Brown and Company, founded in 1837, acquired by Time Inc. in 1968.
[11] The Warner Books subsidiary was renamed Grand Central Publishing, which launched a more literary imprint, Twelve, under former Random House editor-in-chief Jonathan Karp.
The suit alleged that they conspired to fix prices for e-books, and weaken Amazon.com's position in the market, in violation of antitrust law.
[14] In December 2013, a federal judge approved a settlement of the antitrust claims, in which Hachette and the other publishers paid into a fund that provided credits to customers who had overpaid for books due to the price-fixing.
[16][17] On March 12, 2014, Hyperion was renamed Hachette Books, with the naming of Crown Archetype's editor-in-chief Mauro DiPreta as vice president and publisher.
[18] In May 2014, Amazon.com announced it was no longer taking pre-orders for Hachette books, stating a breakdown in negotiations over profit-sharing arrangements.
Amazon published a letter on August 10, 2014 asking authors and readers to email Hachette's CEO Michael Pietsch and ask for lower e-book prices.
[19] In November 2014, Hachette announced that it had entered into an agreement to purchase nonfiction publisher Black Dog & Leventhal.
The sale was finalized in January 2015, and Black Dog & Leventhal became an imprint of the Hachette Books publishing division.
[21] On March 6, 2016, HBG announced that it had entered into a binding agreement to purchase the publishing division of The Perseus Books Group.
[22] In April 2016, HBG announced an agreement to create a joint venture with the Yen Press imprint and Japanese publisher Kadokawa.