Our history

Since the A. De Boeck publishing house was founded in 1889, the constitution of the De Boeck Group has been a gradual process, accelerating during two recent periods :

1985-1999 : consolidation and acquisition of various publishing companies, some founded in the 18th century

since 2000 : development of the nexus resulting from these events, and expansion.

• In 2000, the De Boeck Group made two further acquisitions in Flanders, the educational publishers De Sikkel and the educational wing of Standaard Uitgeverij, now regrouped under the name of Uitgeverij De Boeck.

• This period, marked by the digital revolution, also saw the creation of DBiT, a Group subsidiary specialising in electronic document management, and the acquisition of the Belgian tax information portal FiscalNet.

• The diversification of our activities also had a geographical dimension – the acquisition in France of Editions médicales Estem, based in Paris, and the creation of De Boeck Diffusion or DBD, our French marketing subsidiary. These two developments are an indication of the Group’s will to strengthen its presence in France.

Our 205 employees now operate across three countries, France, Luxembourg and Belgium, where, apart from our head office in Brussels, we have three editorial offices: in Louvain-la-Neuve, Antwerp and Ghent.

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Our business

To ensure the widest distribution for our authors’ works, and to provide our readers with books, reviews and digital services which correspond to their needs and give a high level of added value, we operate one central business and two complementary ones :

• Publishing is of course the heart of our work: from analysing the needs of our various readerships to creating publications which meet these needs, in collaboration with our authors. This includes production and promotion.

To improve our performance in our core business, we have two complementary activities :

• Commercial circulation and distribution, via our subsidiaries De Boeck Services (DBS) in Belgium and De Boeck Diffusion (DBD) in France, both directed by Baudouin Malache: we distribute and circulate both the books and reviews of our own publishing houses and those of other specialist companies.

• Electronic document management, or the processing, storage and management (searching, updating etc.) of documents using computers, so that our publications can be produced both on paper (printing) and electronically (distributed over the Internet): our subsidiary DBiT, in Luxembourg, has become an acknowledged expert in this field.
  

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Our publishing houses

We are proud of our current position, where we have a presence in various areas of non-fiction publishing, in both French and Dutch, via our six publishing houses :

• De Boeck Education is the leading educational publisher in French-speaking Belgium ;

• De Boeck Université is confirming its position after fifteen years of activity as one of the major academic publishers in the French language, with more than 1,500 titles in its current catalogue ;

• Duculot, whose catalogue includes a large number of scholarly and scientific works, mainly in the field of French language and other linguistics studies, has now been incorporated into the De Boeck Université catalogue ;

• Estem specialises in publishing books aimed at medical students and medical and nursing professionals ;

• Larcier is one of the longest-established legal publishing houses in Belgium, producing works for legal professionals ;

• Uitgeverij De Boeck is an educational and academic publisher in Dutch-speaking Belgium.
  

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