Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (LSE:BMY) shares rose 17% to 557p on Thursday after the company announced that Sarah J. Maas will publish the next two novels in her A Court of Thorns and Roses series on 27 October 2026 and 12 January 2027, a gap of just 11 weeks.
The news carries direct financial weight. Bloomsbury said its current year profit, to February 2026, is in line with market expectations of £44.3 million.
For the year to February 2027, the company now expects to be materially ahead of the £44.5 million consensus, a number that had assumed no significant Maas contribution in the period.
The scale of the opportunity is grounded in hard commercial data. Maas was the highest-selling author in the United States in 2024 and the top-selling fantasy author in the UK in 2025.
All 16 of her previous novels are published by Bloomsbury. She does not need to be introduced to her audience: the audience is already there, and it is large.
Chief Executive Nigel Newton described publishing two novels from a single bestselling author within 11 weeks as almost unprecedented in publishing history.
The sequencing matters commercially as well as logistically. Two releases in rapid succession mean two retail moments, two marketing cycles and two rounds of chart performance within a single financial year.
Peel Hunt, which rates the stock a 'buy' with an 815p target, estimates the news should lift FY27 operating profit by 11 to 13%, with conservatism built in.
The broker notes the stock was trading on nine times FY27 earnings before the announcement, a multiple that looked undemanding for a publisher with this kind of asset on its list. Even after today's move, the shares remain well below the target price.
The one caveat Peel flags is a reasonable one: predicting the commercial performance of an unread book is inherently uncertain.
But Maas is not an unknown quantity. The ACOTAR series has sold tens of millions of copies worldwide, and the fan base that drove those numbers has not diminished.
For Bloomsbury, the structural question has always been when the next book would arrive. Now it knows the answer is two, back to back, starting in October.