Outstanding Contribution to the Book Trade
WINNER TIM HELY HUTCHINSON
Former Hachette UK chief executive Tim Hely Hutchinson is the recipient of the Outstanding Contribution to the Book Trade award. Hely Hutchin- son bowed out at the top of his game at the end of 2017, having created a legacy over his 40-year career that will endure for many decades to come. Hachette is firmly cemented as the UK's second-largest trade publish- ing group, with its portfolio of a dozen different publishing businesses acquired over a 13-year period showing how corporate publishing can be both big and human, commercial and collegiate. For almost all of his career, Hely Hutchinson has been a pivotal player
in the publishing business: he became managing director of Robert Maxwell’s Macdonald Futura at just 28 years of age, before he founded Headline in 1986 with Sue Fletcher and Sian Thomas. He wanted to run an author-led, commercially driven publisher at a time when the hardback was still considered nonpareil and the Net Book Agreement constrained market instinct. Headline's guiding philosophy was to produce "books that people actually want to buy". Ten years later the NBA was gone, and Headline had become Hodder
Headline—having acquired Hodder & Stoughton in 1993 and floated on the Stock Exchange. Authors came its way too, perhaps most rewardingly Martina Cole, whose Dangerous Lady was sold by agent Darley Anderson to Headline in 1991 for what was then the dangerous sum of £150,000. After a brief assignation with W H Smith, Hodder Headline was bought
by Hachette Livre in 2004, kicking off a period of growth and agglomera- tion as Hely Hutchinson acquired businesses as substantial as Little, Brown, as interesting as Bookouture, as intriguing as apps developer Neon Play, and as leftfield as Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Running a corporate came with its own demands—and his scrap with Amazon in 2008 over terms was memorable for it becoming public as well as presaging the even tougher fights to come. Yet he wanted to run a happy ship, with Hachette Livre c.e.o. Arnaud
Nourry praising him—at his retirement party—for making Hachette's new office Carmelite House a "place where staff and authors are honoured and valued and where everyone feels empowered to create their best work". Nourry recalled that in 1988, Hely Hutchinson wrote an article in The Bookseller on the future of publishing, writing: “British publishing may well be beset with problems, but there are solutions: and fortune will fa- vour those who seek the solutions not only with honesty, skill and vigour but also with warmth, sensitivity and imagination.” There are few executives still working in publishing today who have
managed to combine longevity with success; leadership with understand- ing; steel with warmth. His contribution to the book trade has not just been outstanding, it has been shaping, nurturing and inspiring.
THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS WINNERS 2018
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