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Our Bureau

Chennai, Aug. 1 Mr Thomas Abraham, CEO and President of Penguin Books India, has quit the publishing firm and will be taking over as Managing Director of the India operations of Hachette Livre, the UK’s top publishing group.

The new venture, says a press release, will initially concentrate on sales and marketing for Hachette’s strong trade lists from around the world and plans to begin a local publishing operation will follow when the first phase is well under way, in early 2009.

Hachette Livre, the largest trade publishing group in the UK and also the third largest publisher in the world, has several prominent imprints in its fold such as Hodder & Stoughton, John Murray, Orion Books, Little Brown and Abacus. It already publishes leading Indian authors, Vikram Seth among them.

Mr Abraham, an English literature graduate from Loyola College inChennai, took over as CEO in end-2003, stepping into, as he told Business Line, the formidable shoes of David Davidar when he left to become publisher of Penguin Canad a. As he recalls, “There were dire predictions that Penguin would implode and most feared that authors would leave Penguin.”

However, Mr Abraham leaves Penguin at a stage when its turnover would almost triple to Rs 90 crore by the end of this year. He also developed a new business imprint strategy, Portfolio, which he said is doing well and “all thing are lined up for the re-launch of Pelican,” he adds. Indian language publishing by Penguin were also started in his tenure.

He is succeeded by Mr Mike Bryan, head of international sales at Penguin UK.

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