Bloomsbury profits soar following release of final Harry Potter book

Publisher Bloomsbury said its profits soared last year after the release of the final Harry Potter book. The firm said it was confident now in the ‘post Harry Potter era‘, after it published the last in the series of the best-selling novels in 2007.

Its pre-tax profit more than tripled to £17.86 million compared with £5.2 million in 2006. Turnover for 2007 doubled to £150.21 million from £74.8 million in 2006.

The worldwide success of the Harry Potter books has historically generated bumper profits for Bloomsbury, but the company is now entering a new phase.

As well as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, it said Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner had sold well. Other strong sellers included Mr Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns and Jonathan Littell’s Die Wohlgesinnten.

Chief executive Nigel Newton said we have reduced overhead costs, are successfully developing new business areas in specialist publishing, and have a strong pipeline of titles.

Numis Media Analysts said while the final Harry Potter book was released in 2007, we believe the group will be able profitably to mine the franchise for several years, including a paperback edition of Harry Potter 7 (The Deathly Hallows) possibly this year.

According to Reuters Estimates, profit is forecast to fall to around £10 million this year and revenue to £84 million.

Bloomsbury, which is expanding into the digitised book market, announced a deal with Microsoft to publish its back catalogue of titles online, making a limited selection free for readers later this year.

Mr Newton said we’ve entered into a partnership with Microsoft to digitise our entire list and make controlled amounts of it available on the internet for free.

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