Bloomsbury to beat expectations on ‘romantasy’ boom

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Bloomsbury, the London-listed publisher, will beat full-year financial expectations after sales for “romantasy” books by Sarah J Maas and JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series continued to soar.

The company on Thursday reported the highest first-half sales and earnings in its history, with pre-tax profits rising to £22.1mn from £14mn a year earlier on revenues of £179.8mn, up from £136.7mn last year.

Shares in the book publisher, which said it was the fifth straight year in which it had achieved double-digit growth in the first six months, rose more than 8 per cent in early trading in London.

Bloomsbury has benefited from a catalogue of older but still hugely popular fantasy fiction books such as the Harry Potter series — still in the bestseller lists 27 years after publication.

The publisher said sales for Maas — who has produced more than a dozen “romantasy” books — more than doubled in the period.

The author’s latest book, Crescent City: House of Flame and Shadow, became a global number one bestseller upon publication on January 30 and drove significant sales in her 15 previous titles. In total, Bloombury has sold 55mn copies of her novels. Nigel Newton, chief executive, described the author as the “Taylor Swift” of the publishing world.

The publisher warned that there would not be a new Maas title in the second half of this year, which would make a tougher comparative, but added that it had six future books under contract with the US author.

The group has also achieved good sales in other areas such as children’s books and cookery, where it has had success with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s How to Eat 30 Plants a Week and Poppy O’Toole’s Poppy Cooks: The Actually Delicious Air Fryer Cookbook.

As a result, Bloomsbury said its first-half results had exceeded expectations and subsequent strong trading in September and October meant it would beat market forecasts for its full-year results.

The company’s board said consensus market expectations for the year ending February 28 2025 had been for revenue of £319.3mn and profit before tax and certain items of £37.5mn.

On Thursday morning, shares in Bloomsbury rose almost 9 per cent to 742p, and have risen more than 90 per cent over the past year. It was admitted to the FTSE 250 on August 1.

The company also owns a non-consumer arm, where revenue grew 3 per cent to £48.5mn. Newton said: “While the academic market is experiencing budget pressure in the UK and parts of the US, we are well positioned given our long-term strategic focus on the shift from print to digital.”

Newton said Bloomsbury was “exploring the opportunity to monetise content through AI deals in a responsible and ethical manner”. He told the FT that he was either talking to, or was planning to talk to, all the major AI groups to explore whether there could be a deal.

He has previously warned that artificial intelligence start-ups were ripping off the work of popular authors, adding to fears that tech companies were stealing from the creative industries to train their models and produce copycat alternatives.

Newton said the new Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Act would help “ensure a more level playing field between online retailers and publishers and authors than at present”, adding: “With great power comes great responsibility but a regulator is essential to enforce it.”