Bloomsbury Publishing

This article is about the contemporary publishing company. For the historic literary group, see Bloomsbury Group.

Bloomsbury Publishing plc

Bloomsbury-publishing-logo.PNG
Status	Active
Traded as	LSE: BMY FTSE SmallCap component
Founded	26 September 1986 (1986-09-26)
Founder	Nigel Newton
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Headquarters location	London, England
Distribution	Macmillan Publishers Services (UK, US) United Book Distributors (Australia)
Key people	Sir Richard Lambert (Non-executive Chairman) Nigel Newton (Chief Executive)
Publication types	Books, digital content products and online resources such as databases
Imprints	Bloomsbury Academic Bloomsbury Methuen Drama (New York City)
Revenue	£230.1 million (y/e 28/02/2022)
Official website	www.bloomsbury.com

Bloomsbury Publishing plc is a British worldwide publishing house of fiction and non-fiction. It is a constituent of the FTSE SmallCap Index. Bloomsbury's head office is located in Bloomsbury, an area of the London Borough of Camden. It has a US publishing office located in New York City, an India publishing office in New Delhi, an Australia sales office in Sydney CBD and other publishing offices in the UK including in Oxford. The company's growth over the past two decades is primarily attributable to the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling and, from 2008, to the development of its academic and professional publishing division.

The Bloomsbury Academic & Professional division won the Bookseller Industry Award for Academic, Educational & Professional Publisher of the Year in both 2013 and 2014.

Divisions

Bloomsbury Publishing group has two separate publishing divisions—the Consumer division and the Non-Consumer division—supported by group functions, namely Sales and Marketing, Book Production, Finance and Technology. Imprints and book lists of publishing businesses acquired by Bloomsbury are assigned to the most relevant publishing division.

History

The company was founded in 1986 by Nigel Newton, who had previously been employed by other publishing companies. It was floated as a public registered company in 1994, raising £5.5 million, which was used to fund expansion of the company into paperback and children's books. A rights issue of shares in 1998 raised a further £6.1 million, which was used to expand the company, in particular to found a U.S. branch. In 1998, Bloomsbury USA was established. Bloomsbury USA Books for Young Readers was established in 2002, and in 2005, Bloomsbury acquired Walker & Co, a small company dedicated to publishing nonfiction. The Walker brand was discontinued in 2015 and sold to Walker Publishing Company.

In December 2008, Bloomsbury opened a branch in Doha, Qatar, under joint-partnership with Qatar Foundation. The publishing house created, called Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing, worked mainly with English and Arabic literature.

Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Journals (BQFJ), an open access, peer reviewed academic publisher, was created in December 2010 as a joint venture with Qatar Foundation. Journal research articles were published through BQFJ's website Qscience.com. The company's partnership with Qatar Foundation ended in December 2015 and all of Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing works were incorporated in Qatari-owned HBKU Press. At the time of BQFP's dissolution it had published over 200 books. BQFJ's works were also incorporated in HBKU Press.

In 2012, Bloomsbury established a publishing office in India.

Acquisitions and imprints

Among the companies, book lists and imprints that Bloomsbury has acquired are:

• Bloomsbury Academic (1986)
• A & C Black (2000)
• Whitaker's Almanack (2002)
• T & AD Poyser (2002)
• Thomas Reed Publications (2002)
• Peter Collin Publishing (2002)
• Andrew Brodie Publications (2003)
• Walker Publishing Company (2004)
• Methuen Drama (2006)
• Berg Publishers (2008)
• John Wisden & Co (2008)
• Arden Shakespeare (2008)
• Tottel Publishing (2009)
• Bristol Classical Press (2010)
• Continuum International Publishing Group (2011)
• Absolute Press (2011)
• Fairchild Books (2012)
• Applied Visual Arts Publishing (2012)
• Hart Publishing (2013)
• Osprey Publishing (2014)
• I. B. Tauris (2018)
• Oberon Books (2019)
• Zed Books (2020)
• Red Globe Press (2021)
• Head of Zeus (2021)
• ABC-CLIO (2021).

See also

• List of largest UK book publishers
• Object Lessons

External links

• Bloomsbury Homepage
• Bloomsbury Investor relations website
• Bloomsbury Online Library Archived 25 October 2015 at the Wayback Machine