The book publisher Bloomsbury has hit record profits in the first half of the year thanks in part to a boom in fantasy fiction driven by the American author Sarah J Maas, the British novelist Samantha Shannon and the continuing popularity of Harry Potter.
The London-based publishing house said profits rose 11% to £17.7m in the six months to August, compared with a year earlier, prompting the company to announce it would more than double its half-year payout for shareholders.
Maas who best known for her fantasy series Throne of Glass, A Court of Thorns and Roses, and Crescent City. Bloomsbury said sales of the New York Times bestselling author’s work had risen by 79% in the first half of the year.
Sales for Shannon’s dystopian and fantasy fiction novels, which include the Bone Season and The Priory of the Orange Tree, jumped 169% over the same period.
“Fantasy is a huge and increasingly popular genre, which has driven forward our consumer division,” the publisher said, adding that demand for JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books “remains strong” 26 years after the first one was published.
The sales helped push total half year sales at Bloomsbury, which also publishes academic works, up 11% to £136.7m.
Its chief executive, Nigel Newton, also cheered the recent success of another of Bloomsbury’s signed authors, Jon Fosse, who won the Nobel prize in literature in October. The Norwegian author writer is best known for his Septology series of novels, Aliss at the Fire, Melancholy and A Shining.
Bloomsbury said its strong cash position would allow it to invest in growth and consider potential acquisitions. Newton said: “These results demonstrate the strength of our strategy of publishing for both the consumer and academic markets.”
In the meantime, the publisher said it would boost payouts for shareholders, who would receive an interim dividend of 3.7p a share, compared with 1.41p a share distributed for the first half of 2022.
Shares in the publisher rose 2% on Thursday morning.
