Books: Consolidation is the big story

The book publishing industry will have to consolidate if it is to stand up to Amazon, Google and a few other dominant retailers of electronic books, according to the chief executive of Hachette Livre, the world's second- largest publisher by sales. Arnaud Nourry said publishers needed to be big to maintain their pricing power in "brutal" talks with the handful of booksellers that would dominate the digital age. "We are at the beginning of the process of transformation where size and the capacity to impose viable business models will be essential," he said.