Bloomsbury USA had its best year ever in 2010 with profits up 160% to 1.3 million pounds ($2.1million) before central charges of 200,000 pounds. Sales rose 1.6% to 19.1 million pounds ($31 million). Sales were led by The Finkler Question, backlist sales, three children’s bestsellers, right sales and e-books. E-book sales totaled $2.3 million for all of Bloomsbury with two-thirds of that coming from the U.S. In the first month Finkler was on sale in the U.S., 42% of sales were from e-books.
Bloomsbury expects sales of e-books to continue to grow at a rapid rate and the company has 1,800 e-books now available. Total revenue at Bloomsbury rose from 87.2 million pounds to 90.7 million pounds, although pretax profits slipped to 5.5 million pounds from 7.1 million pounds.
Last month, Bloomsbury announced it was forming four worldwide publishing groups and the new structure takes effect today. The reorganization is being done in part to keep pace with changes brought about by the increase of e-book sales across Bloomsbury’s worldwide markets and Bloomsbury CEO Nigel Newton predicted that 2011 will be the year of the e-book.
