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Faber announces strong results for the year with turnover at £27.1m
Faber has announced strong results for the year ending 31st March 2024, with turnover reaching £27.1m, from £25.4m – the second-best result the publisher has reported to date.
Meanwhile, operating profit was at £1.3m, slightly down on last year’s £1.4m, which can be attributed to one-off costs related to Faber’s distribution move. However, this number is significantly down on 2022, when the company’s operating profit reached £3.1m.
In the past year, Faber author Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead won the Pulitzer Prize, the Women’s Prize, a James Tait Black Prize and an Indie Book Award, among others. Meanwhile, Claire Keegan published a standalone story, So Late in the Day, and won the Author of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, while the publisher continued to reissue her backlist, including Antarctica, which was a Waterstones Book of the Month. Penance author Eliza Clark and Open Up author Tom Morris were also named Granta Best of Young British novelists.
Further highlights for the publisher included the publication of Max Porter’s Shy and Richard Armitage’s successful crime debut Geneva. Moreover, Lucy Caldwell won the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction for These Days, Claire Kilroy’s Soldier Sailor was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize and the Irish Book Awards, and Sebastian Barry’s Old God’s Time was longlisted for the Booker Prize. In the autumn, Paul Auster’s final novel, Baumgartner, was also published by Faber.
Faber’s non-fiction list continued to be recognised, with James Shapiro winning the Baillie Gifford Winner of Winners Award for 1599. Tania Branigan’s Red Memory won the Cundill History Prize and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize, alongside Jeremy Eichler’s Time’s Echo from Faber’s classical music list. Meanwhile, Katherine Rundell’s The Golden Mole, which also a Waterstones Book of the Month, went on to win an Indie Book Award in 2024.
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In poetry, Mary Jean Chan’s collection, Bright Fear, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize, while Ishion Hutchinson’s School of Instructions was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. Victoria Adukwei Bulley won the John Pollard Prize, and Zaffar Kunial the Ledbury Hellens Poetry Prize. Faber also published a popular new selection of Wendy Cope’s The Orange and Other Poems, in response to fans discovering the poem on TikTok. In October, Faber announced the appointment of a new poetry editor, Lavinia Greenlaw. In partnership with the National Trust, the publisher also released Simon Armitage’s Blossomise, illustrated by Angela Harding.
Faber also landed the global publishing of Barbie and Oppenheimer, as well as the Succession scripts in four volumes. Finally, for Faber Children’s, The Rescue of Ravenwood, The Taming of the Cat and Finding Wonder were all popular books for younger readers, as well as There’s a Tiger on the Train. In addition, You’re So Amazing! by James and Lucy Catchpole and Karen George won the Inclusive Books for Children Award, and Christine Pillainayagam’s Ellie Pillai Is Brown was shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize and won the Branford Boase Prize. Mia and the Lightcasters was also shortlisted for the Week Junior Award, the Diverse Book Awards and the Jhalak Prize.
The publisher has moved to The Bindery in Hatton Garden, London, and an inflation-related pay award was made in April alongside a one-off lump sum paid to those earning under £50,000 to help with cost-of-living pressures. The company’s starting salary increased to £27,700 in April 2023 and new menopause and carers policies were launched during the year.
Mary Cannam, managing director of Faber, said: "We remain committed to finding the widest audiences for an extraordinary list of new and existing writers and we were delighted with our financial results. During the year, we moved to The Bindery, realising our vision of creating a lively, welcoming hub for our wide community: our staff, writers, academy students, Faber members and other independent publishers. We published an exceptional list with energy and skill, and I’m proud of everything the team achieved in the year."
