Bloomsbury launches B2B-focussed strategy; reports revenue increase for 2015

In the UK, Bloomsbury has unveiled a new strategy that will aim to reposition the publisher from a primarily consumer-driven focussed model to ‘a digital B2B (business-to-business)’ model by capitalising on the academic market, reports the Bookseller. The new strategy, which is named Bloomsbury 2020, will see the company focus on ‘growing revenues from academic and professional digital resources for academic libraries worldwide,’ said Bloomsbury CEO Nigel Newton. Bloomsbury will also undergo a restructure to organise the company into two divisions: consumer and non-consumer, with the consumer division to merge the children’s trade and adult trade businesses, and all other operations in the non-consumer division. The strategy was announced at the same time as the release of Bloomsbury’s full-year financial results for the year ending 29 February 2016, which saw overall revenue increase by 11% to £123.7m (A$2.50m) and pre-tax profit rise by 8% to £13m (A$2.62m). Revenue for the children’s and education division posted its third year of double-digit growth, up 57% to £41.8m (A$84.38m), due to a rise of 133% for the ‘Harry Potter’ series. Last year’s acquisition of Osprey Publishing brought in a revenue of £7.2m (A$14.53m), which helped sales of adult books for the publisher rise 3%. The academic and professional divisions generated a revenue of £32.7m (A$66.01m), which the publisher reported was ‘slightly lower than expected’.

Category: International news