The planned sale of Editis by Vivendi, which is controlled by French billionaire Vincent Bollore, is part of Vivendi's strategy to overcome regulatory hurdles regarding its acquisition of French company Lagardere.

Vivendi said its decision to embark on talks with Kretinsky meant that it was dropping an earlier plan to spin-off Editis and float it on the Paris stock market.

Hachette, which is currently owned by Lagardere and is the world's third-biggest publishing group, is key to Vivendi's planned takeover of Lagardere.

The prospect of Hachette being merged with Editis triggered criticism from independent publishers and resulted in Editis losing some well-known authors.

Daniel Kretinsky has built up one of Europe's biggest energy companies over the last decade.

In France, Kretinsky has stakes in Le Monde newspaper, supermarket company Casino and TV group TF1.

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Editing by Louise Heavens, Kirsten Donovan)