North America sales at Bloomsbury rose 2.3% in the first half of 2010, the U.K.-based publisher announced this morning, with revenue rising to 8.9 million pounds ($13.9 million). Operating income increased to 600,000 pounds from just over breakeven in the first six months of 2009. According to Bloomsbury, the U.S. operation has benefitted from ongoing rights sales and good re-orders for backlist titles. New books doing well include Captivate by Carrie Jones, Hearts at Stake by Alyxander Harvey and Rules of Attraction by Simone Elkeles. Though it didn’t give exact figures, Bloomsbury said it expects e-book sales in the U.S. “to be a healthy seven figure sum this year.”
The North American operation is also beginning to see some benefits from expansion of its professional operations. As of 1 May the full publishing responsibility for A&C Black and Methuen Drama was transferred over from the U.K. and the distribution from its third-party agency arrangement to Bloomsbury US.
For all of Bloomsbury, revenue in the first half of 2010 rose 4.2%, to 36.8 million pounds, though pretax profits dropped to 949,000 pounds from 1.8 million pounds.
