Nigel Newton, Bloomsbury Publishing PLC’s (LON:BMY) chief executive, says it has more best sellers on the way to follow up a great twelve months for its adult consumer section in the year to February. Rutger Bregman’s Human Kind, for example, has already racked up sales of 24,000 and is a story for the current uncertain times, he adds.
The coronavirus pandemic has meant all bookstores have shut (alongside universities), which has meant huge disruption to book sales, but Newton says Bloomsbury’s online divisions are taking up a lot of the slack.
So much so, that sales in March and April were only 3% below last year.
Bloomsbury expects a gradual recovery to start from July as bookstores re-open, but it will be a slow process not an instant rebound and the company has taken cost-saving measures to get it though.