Harry Potter publisher boosted by lockdown readers: Bloomsbury magics up strong sales for fantasy fiction and digital books
- Harry Potter book sales helped Bloomsbury’s children’s division to jump by 27%
- In April, the company furloughed staff and cut its board members’ pay by 30%
- Britons read 2.7 hours more per week in early May than before the lockdown
High sales of the perennially popular Harry Potter books and other fantasy fiction novels during lockdown caused revenues at publisher Bloomsbury to soar in recent months.
Surging demand for digital books also helped the company’s year-on-year revenues to rise 18 per cent to £49.5million in the four months to June 30 even though UK bookshops were forced to close between late March and mid-June.
More readers used the period to pick up Bloomsbury titles like Sarah J. Maas’ Crescent City: House of Earth and Blood, White Rage by Carol Anderson, and the Sunday Times bestseller Humankind by Dutch historian Rutger Bregman.
J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series of novels continue to be a golden goose for Bloomsbury
The Reni Eddo-Lodge book Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race was also one of Britain’s biggest sellers and helped bolster revenues at the firm’s consumer division by 28 per cent to £31.5million.
But it was J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series of novels that continued to be a golden goose for Bloomsbury, whose children’s division saw sales jump by over a quarter to £18.8million.
Shares rose 11.5 per cent in the firm as it said its performance in May and June was ‘unexpected,’ though it noted that ‘historically demand for books has been resilient in times of economic downturns.’
E-book sales rose by 53 per cent, far higher than print sales, which only grew 9 per cent, while overall digital sales at the London-based publishing house climbed 63 per cent.
Historian Rutger Bregman’s book Humankind was a bestseller during the lockdown period
Not all its markets did well during the four months either. In Australia, Bloosmbury’s revenues remained virtually flat. But in India, they plummeted 70 per cent, with the publisher blaming ‘the severe impact of government lockdowns.’
Still, sales have continued to remain healthy since lockdown restrictions were lifted in the UK, both in-store and online, which Bloomsbury partly attributed to having bestsellers in both the US and UK.
Yet despite the positive trading update, the business stated that the pandemic has made its outlook ‘uncertain’ and iterated its previous announcement in May that it was not providing financial guidance for the year.
Publishers have pushed back the date for releasing new books and Investec’s Alastair Reid and Ross Broadfoot wrote that a ‘more crowded industry release schedule’ over the autumn could lead to weaker growth for Bloomsbury.
Bloomsbury’s sales have continued to remain healthy since lockdown restrictions were lifted in the UK, both in-store and online
The autumn season could also see struggles for its academic & professional branch, which expanded by 4 per cent during the reporting period. However, it could be damaged by the decline in international students, who pay higher fees than UK students to study here.
Even if lower sales and student numbers damage Bloomsbury though, it declared that it had ‘sufficient liquidity to weather the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and avoid damaging our business in the long-term.’
In April, the company furloughed staff, slashed the salaries of its board members by 30 per cent, and launched a multi-million pound share issue to help cut costs.
According to data measurement firm Nielsen, the value and volume of UK book sales in the four weeks after non-essential shops were allowed to reopen shot up by 19.1 per cent and 17.6 per cent, respectively.
A recent survey from the group also found that the amount of reading people did each week during the lockdown rose by an extra 2.7 hours by the beginning of the May, though it dipped back marginally by the middle of May to an added 2.5 hours.