Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (LSE:BMY) chief executive Nigel Newton said a strong part of the company’s success is down to editors selecting the "books of the moment" that people really want to read.
Last week's annual profits were said to be materially ahead of market forecasts as sales in recent months came in higher than expected (read more).
Newton acknowledged the role that pandemic played in changing habits.
“Reading has been such a feature of the two-year-old pandemic and it's continuing even though society is opening up again, and retail outlets are all there selling books extremely well as online outlets continue to do as well,” he said.
But he also stressed that a strong element of the company’s outperformance was publishing the right books that people wanted to read.
Newton drew specific focus to the fiction book ‘Violeta’ by Isabel Allende, which follows a woman coming of age in a period just after the Spanish Flu, and non-fiction title ‘Stolen Focus’ by Johann Hari, which addresses “how we’ve all lost our minds to our telephones”.
Both books are extremely relevant to the ongoing pandemic, but Newton does not anticipate a let-off in reading as society returns to normality.
“If anything, we're seeing an intensification of sales,” he told Proactive (watch video).
“The pandemic lockdowns created an unprecedented showcase for the act of reading itself [as] people started reading again as they tired of watching too many movies on television.
“And I think they're not going to let it go out of their lives again.”
Newton said Bloomsbury is not resting on its laurels, with further acquisitions and growth prospects in the pipeline.
“We are actively on the acquisition trail with our considerable amounts of ready cash to make those purchases.
“We've undertaken considerable expansion plans on all sides of our business… to underpin a really ambitious growth programme,” Newton told Proactive