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Sunday 19 January 2020

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Bloomsbury predicts 2011 will be the year of the e-book as revenues rise 4pc

Publishing group Bloomsbury has predicted that 2011 will be the "year of the e-book" after announcing a 4pc rise in 2010 revenues to £90.7m.

A reporter holds the new Amazon Kindle 2.0 at an unveiling event at the Morgan Library & Museum February 9, 2009 in New York City
Photo: Getty Images

The company, which publishes the Harry Potter series of books, said that in the US fiction e-book sales are now estimated to account for around 15pc of total sales. This was highlighted by the success of the 2010 Man Booker Prize winner - 42pc of US sales of Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question were electronic.

E-book revenues for the group grew more than 18-fold in 2010 over 2009 from $131,000 to $2.3m.

However, despite the rising sales, Bloomsbury saw its pre-tax profit fall from £7.1m in 2009 to £5.5m in 2010. This was due to goodwill impairments and a move to new headquarters.

Chief executive Nigel Newton said on the release of the results: "Bloomsbury had an excellent year, with a number of bestselling titles and particularly buoyant sales in the final quarter.

"We are also benefitting from our strong position in digital publishing, which continues to experience exciting and unprecedented growth. With sales of digital devices such as the Kindle, Nook and iPad growing rapidly, 2011 will clearly be the year of the e-book. We believe that digital publishing creates huge opportunities for Bloomsbury and its authors."

With nearly 1,800 e-books published by Bloomsbury last year, the company highlighted online booksellers as a reason for being optimistic. It said that 40pc of Amazon's new bestseller sales are in e-book format. In addition to this, Amazon reported more than 8m Kindles sold last year, more than 5m during the Christmas period; while Apple reported more than 7m iPads sold in the fourth quarter of 2010.

Bloomsbury continued to see enjoy sales of the seven Harry Potter paper books, which sold well on the back of the film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One and the release of the series with new jacket designs.

In the UK revenue grew 6.5pc to £62.7m, helped by the company's Public Library Online project, which helps libraries offer cost-effective online access to books.

Investec said that its "valuation looks far too low given good momentum and strong figures. The first two months of the year are seasonally quiet (and typically loss-making) though Bloomsbury is seeing 'a lot of activity' from back list titles and new titles. Digital sales are at good margin currently and mostly incremental as new Kindle and iPad owners buy more ebooks."

A second interim dividend of 3.91p per share, a 7pc increase on the 2009 final dividend, will be paid on June 1.

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