Revenue and profits rise at Bloomsbury

Bloomsbury has seen a growth in revenue and profits in the past year, with the publisher's adult division marked out by chief executive Nigel Newton for its "spectacular year".

For the year ended 28th February 2014, the publisher has revenue of £109.5m, up 11% from £98.5m in the previous year. Profit before tax and other costs including restructuring was up 4% to £13m, up from £12.5m in 2013. Bloomsbury's adult publishing division generated revenues of £44.9m, up from £44.3m in 2013, with operating profit up to £5.4m from £3.7m the previous year. Overall profit before tax saw a dip, from £9.8m in 2013 to £9.5m.

Bloomsbury saw growth across all its divisions, with revenue up in adult, academic and professional, children's and educational and in digital. Altogether, digital sales increased 21% to £12.2m, contributing 12.1% of the publisher's title sales. The results said: "Whilst US e-book sales growth has moderated, the UK and other markets still see robust growth with potential for even more as digital reading devices become ever more widespread in the high-growth economies of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America."

The academic and professional business saw revenue rise 11% to £32.1m from £29m the year before, with e-books and digital products accounting for 10% of revenue. The business won the Academic, Professional and Educational Publisher of the Year award at the Bookseller Industry Awards last week, and in 2013.

Newton told The Bookseller: "What has worked so well for us is combining the parts of the business that overlap, things like finance, accounts, production, many aspects of sales, but keeping separate commissioning and editorial. It is working fantastically well. What we were keen to do was to create a balance for the volatile trade publishing side of the business with the steadier, more global academic and professional sector."

As well as launching projects such as Drama Online, Boomsbury is planning Bloomsbury Fashion Central in 2015, a "major project" that will create an online directory of fashion information for academic and student users.

The results show that in its first full year, Bloomsbury's publishing business in New Dehli generated revenues of £1.5m, breaking even.

Particular titles singled out for success include Khaled Hosseini's And The Mountains Echoed, Samantha Shannon's The Bone Season, and Tom Kerridge's Proper Pub Food.

Newton said: "Chefs are our new rock stars. We have several books coming from our biggest cookery stars, so we're excited about the coming year."