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Bloomsbury publishers ready for the “post Harry Potter era”

Tuesday, 01 April 2008

Bloomsbury publishers ready for the “post Harry Potter era”

Bloomsbury, who are the publishers of best-selling author JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series, say we are now in the "post Harry Potter era", and they are looking towards the future without relying on sales from books about the teenage wizard.

Last year, Bloomsbury published the last in the Harry Potter series and the firm’s pre-tax profit more than tripled to £17.86m from what it took in 2006, which was a year when there was no book about the young magician.

But in addition to the income from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Bloomsbury said that Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner had also done very well for them.

Bloomsbury have entered this year with new titles by other authors that they feel confident will sell well too, and chief executive Nigel Newton of the company explained: "We are now well positioned for the post Harry Potter era. We have reduced overhead costs, are successfully developing new business areas in specialist publishing, and have a strong pipeline of titles."

But not everyone thinks we have heard the last of Harry Potter just yet.

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