It’s not all down to Harry Potter. Bloomsbury yesterday credited Bruce Springsteen, the rock star known as “The Boss”, for a rise in sales.
The publishing group reported a 19 per cent year-on-year jump in revenue for the three months to May 31 after its new Bloomsbury Popular Music digital division, which features Springsteen and other artists, recorded a 16 per cent rise in sales.
Bloomsbury said that its music download service was proving popular among students in trials in university libraries.
Nevertheless, sales were also boosted by the enduring popularity of the boy wizard. The 20th anniversary of the first publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was celebrated last month and two new books come out in October to accompany the British Library’s Harry Potter exhibition. Harry Potter: A History of Magic — The Book of the Exhibition takes readers through the subjects studied at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, while Harry Potter — A Journey through A History of Magic outlines the background of magic from ancient witchcraft to alchemy.
Other top-selling titles included the fantasy A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J Maas, Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman, Tom Kerridge’s Dopamine Diet and The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray. The biggest-selling children’s non-fiction title in Britain was Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World by Kate Pankhurst.
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Bloomsbury said that its online professional resource division had enjoyed a “strong start” to the year. It launched professional resource publications including International Tax, Practice and Procedure, Intellectual Property and Info Technology and Clinical Negligence.
The company plans to launch the Bloomsbury Design Library, an online service, this month after a successful American showcase.
Steve Liechti, an analyst at Investec, said that Bloomsbury’s first quarter of trading was encouraging for a traditionally quiet period and that the group’s prospects for the rest of the year looked healthy.
Peel Hunt said: “Although first-quarter growth has outstripped our full-year growth rate by some margin, it is unwise (though tempting) to extrapolate as it is a small quarter.
“The Harry Potter launches will see a material increase in marketing expenditure to maximise sales.”
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Bloomsbury said that it expected its full-year profits to be in line with expectations.
Shares in Bloomsbury closed up 1½p, or 0.9 per cent, at 173½p.