Harry Potter publisher Bloomsbury today showed how a couple of big best-sellers can have a dramatic effect as first-quarter revenues leapt 19%, with both print and e-book sales up.
Chief executive Nigel Newton said Khaled Hosseini’s novel And the Mountains Echoed, Great British Bake-Off presenter Paul Hollywood’s Bread and the 150th edition of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack had given Bloomsbury a triple helping of good news. He added: “It was an incredibly strong list in the quarter.”
The new book by Hosseini, author of previous best-sellers The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, was hotly anticipated, and 50% of all sales were e-books.
“There are new patterns of consumer behaviour emerging as the e-book phenomenon becomes better-established,” said Newton, who founded Bloombsury in 1986. “One of them is there is a considerable market for literary fiction. Secondly, people download immediately so they can get the book the instant that it’s available.”
Bloomsbury’s print revenues increased by 16% and “contributed the majority” of the increase in total revenues. Digital sales jumped 31%.
