Bloomsbury Publishing, the home of Harry Potter, has revealed a rise in annual sales as it said people were turning to books as a cheap form of entertainment as finances were squeezed.
Sales of children’s books rose 17%, led by a 51% jump in sales of the hit author Sarah J Maas’s titles whose latest work, Crescent City: House of Sky and Breath, was released in February last year. The child wizard also continues to be popular, with Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, originally published in 1997, the third bestselling children’s book of the year, according to the Nielsen Bookscan charts.
