Welcome to everybody. Welcome to particularly the analysts and the brokers here in the room, and then also to our shareholders. This is the first time we're webcasting this presentation, which is very welcome. We know that there will be many more shareholders and potential shareholders. Also, as importantly, we've got all of our colleagues at Bloomsbury will be joining us by webcast. That is a very good movement forward. Now, this morning, you can see that there's a very large lineup of people in front of you. Maybe I might explain what that's about. You're obviously very used to Nigel Newton, who's Founder and Chief Executive, Penny Scott-Bayfield, who's Finance Director, to really lead the presentation and to do the Q&As. They've been ably supported just over the last year or so by Tamsin Garrity.
You have obviously got a number of other people here in front of you. You have actually got the executive committee of Bloomsbury. I think it really was a reflection of the development of Bloomsbury over really quite quickly, over a number of years, and not least the year that we are looking at, that I think giving you the visibility of the team that runs Bloomsbury, we thought was a very good idea. I hope you agree with that as well. They are going to be each presenting, and we will try and keep to time this morning. They each are going to present in their individual areas. We should have time for Q&A at the end. Of course, what we will do is, I think to try and just keep it in an orderly fashion, if you could, maybe give your questions to Penny.
I think Penny and Nigel really will respond to most of those questions. I think we have a great set of results to present to you and a number of developments that have either landed or will land in this current financial year. To talk more about that, I will hand over to Nigel. Thank you.
Good morning, everyone, and a warm welcome again. Great thanks to John. We were very fortunate at our AGM in July when John Bason became Chairman of Bloomsbury in succession to Sir Richard Lambert. We are powering ahead under his leadership. Today, we are going to talk to you about our strategy of diversification, which has created a portfolio of portfolios, much as all of you who are fund managers do in your own portfolios, balancing the vicissitudes of one area off against another. We believe we have created a long-term resilience model for success in our combination of our unusual combination of academic and general publishing. Results are strong, and the year is broadly in line with expectations in constant currency.
One of our major announcements is the opening of a new office in Singapore to capitalize on the large growth in student numbers, which is projected to occur in Asia quite significantly by 2030 and very dramatically by 2040. Secondly, we are progressing opportunities to monetize our academic content through AI deals, and we are seeking ones which will best serve our authors' interests. Bloomsbury was voted Publisher of the Year at the British Book Awards last Monday in recognition of the incredible work of our teams. Going on to the next slide, last year, we launched our Bloomsbury 2030 vision, which many of you were present for the launch at Number Eight, Bishopsgate. Since then, we have made our largest acquisition to date, Rowman & Littlefield. Since then, we were admitted in August to the FTSE 250.
Since then, we've earned the Great Place to Work certification based on the views of our own staff about the company. Finally, we've expanded our portfolio and continue to diversify for ongoing success. I'm very pleased now to hand over to my great colleague, Penny Scott-Bayfield.
Thank you, Nigel. Morning, everyone. Starting with the key financial highlights. Firstly, revenue for the year was GBP 361 million, up 5%. We made a profit of GBP 42.1 million, a 12% margin. As a reminder, as you well know, this is after last year's exceptional results. Our diluted EPS was GBP 0.4145, reflecting our profit and a slightly lower effective tax rate. Moving on to net cash, which was GBP 17 million. As you know, this is net of our GBP 24 million starling loan, which we took out to help fund our largest acquisition, Rowman & Littlefield, in the first half. Our final dividend, up 5%. We will talk more about that later. Coming on to revenue, this is really, again, showcasing the strengths of digital and the resilience of print.
With print, you see the impact of our acquisition of Rowman & Littlefield, with the consumer print in line with last year. Many of you remember just how strong that was. E-books continued to grow, and that was driven by a 13% increase in our consumer e-books. Really interesting to see how that demand for different formats is so strong. Coming on to audio, which, as many of you know, we have been excited about for some time, and in fact, Kathleen will talk more about later, we saw that growth accelerating again. That is up 57% on top of our 50% growth last year. BDR delivered a 2% growth, very resilient in a challenging market. Jenny will talk more about both the BDR and the markets later.
Coming on to the strengths of our balance sheet, which many of you know is always a key, very close to my heart. I mentioned net cash of GBP 17 million. That is net of our GBP 24 million starling loan. We used our strong cash generation this year to pay GBP 6 million of that off early. That is a three-year loan, but we have already started to pay that off. We reduced our working capital positive. Goodwill and intangibles obviously increased because of the acquisition of Rowman & Littlefield. Moving on to our cash- flow, you can see here the strength of our trading, that GBP 42 million profit, enormously helping our cash. We have been able to reward shareholders, which is such a key priority for us, with GBP 12 million of dividends. You can see here the acquisition of RNL for GBP 65 million.
Here, again, you see that benefit of the reduction in the working capital, again, really helping our cash flow. Moving on to show you, very pleased to show you another year of dividend growth with that 5% increase in the final dividend on top of our 5% increase in the interim dividend and reiterating that we're very committed to our progressive dividend. I will now hand you over to Tamsin, and it is a coincidence that we are in the same color.
Thank you, Penny. Management has built a portfolio of portfolios, which has the benefit of being diversified both across consumer and academic publishing and internationally, enhancing our resilience. We have grown earnings 155% over the last five years and maintain our strong dividend track record with a 5% total increase in 2024-2025, which reflects both the achievements in this financial year and the confidence that we have in the company being well positioned for further development. Moving on to investor relations, which is my role, we have been proactively increasing engagement with shareholders over the last 18 months. We have increased analyst coverage from two to six with high-quality initiation reports, increasing visibility and knowledge in the market. Thank you all. Many of you are in this room. We joined the FTSE 250 in August 2024 and continue to be ambitious.
Our ongoing task is to expand our geographic reach of our shareholder base. We are working with Investec on an upcoming U..S roadshow, Berenberg in Europe, and those plus Deutsche Numis, Singer Capital Markets, and Peel Hunt on roadshows and engaging new shareholders. We're pleased to say overall we have doubled our shareholder meetings, attended many conferences, most notably Berenberg's, whose conferences have been referred to by the Times as Love Island for suits. I would like to introduce my award-winning colleague, Ian Hudson, Managing Director of Consumer Publishing.
Thank you, Tamsin. The greater diversification of our consumer portfolio was really shone through this year with real breadth of both critical success and commercial success across multiple genres. We enjoyed particular success with our cookery, with best-selling titles on air fryers, slow cookers, Greek cuisine, and plant-based cooking. Nonfiction delivered several major titles ranging from William Dalrymple's The Golden Road, which was a bestseller in the U.K., the U.S., and India for 35 weeks, through to Gillian Anderson's Want, which topped the U.K. bestseller charts for four consecutive weeks and generated significant foreign rights income. Fiction successes included Samantha Shannon's Bone Season series, Sarah J. Maas, of course, and Ann Patchett's Tom Lake. In children's successes included Christmas at Hogwarts, which was our biggest-selling Harry Potter title last year.
This coming year, we have Pocket Potters, which everybody should look out for because I think it will be a significant international success. Our collective effort was rewarded last week by being voted Publisher of the Year 2025 at the British Book Awards for our adult publishing, a very public recognition of our growth journey, our talented teams, and the breadth and depth of our author talent. Moving on, Bloomsbury has a rich history for building new consumer bestsellers, institutionalizing our luck, as Nigel often says. With Poppy Cooks, with the Poppy Cooks series, we have taken a social media star and turned her into a bestselling author and helped us establish her as a regular on TV, a virtuous circle.
With Gillian Anderson's Want, we worked closely with Gillian to create and launch a collection of anonymous fantasy submissions from the general public, combined with an outstanding sales, marketing, and publicity campaign. Thank you very much, Kathleen. It became a huge bestseller. Our publicity team won Campaign of the Year at the British Book Awards, with the judges referring to it as an all-company all-guns blazing campaign. In children's, we continue to create new Harry Potter product in-house. In 2025, as I mentioned a moment ago, we will have the Pocket Potter series. It has potential to be a really, truly international bestseller. We also, though, continue to build other properties. Kathryn Rundell's sales have enjoyed significant success with the paperback of Impossible Creatures. We have the next book in the series, The Poison King, coming this year.
I'd now like to hand over to Jenny Ridout, MD of our academic and professional publishing. Jenny.
Thank you very much, Ian. Good morning, everybody. Academic and professional revenue grew 18%, and our profit margin expanded to 15% following the acquisition of Rowman & Littlefield. Organically, revenue reduced by 10% as the academic and professional market is experiencing budget pressures in the U.K. and the U.S. We are optimistic given the growth in the overall addressable market, with global student numbers potentially reaching 600 million by 2040 and with 60% of these in Asia. We already have Bloomsbury offices in Australia and India, and we will launch a new office in Singapore in 2025 to capitalize on the growing region. Regarding AI, we are progressing the opportunity to monetize content through AI deals, and we will be mindful of our responsibility to our authors in this process.
The acquisition of Rowman & Littlefield in May of last year was our largest to date, and integration is progressing well. Rowman & Littlefield contributed GBP 19.8 million revenue in the nine months since acquisition. The talent and the content have been game-changing for us, broadening and deepening our offering, and we are excited about continuing to digitize into the BDR platform. BDR grew 2% with trends consistent with those highlighted at the interims. Renewal rates remained at 90%, demonstrating resilience of demand for the product. We reiterate our ambitious target of GBP 41 million revenue by the year-end 2027-2028, benefiting from the expansion into new subject verticals and sales expansion. This next wonderful slide depicts some of our leading brands in special interest.
With BDI, if you might be wondering where Wisden is, it is actually in the picture there with Sarah Broadway, who heads up special interests there at the Wisden Almanack at launch at Lord's in April. I will now hand over to Sabrina McCarthy, our President of Bloomsbury U.S. Thank you.
Thank you, Jenny. Good morning, everyone. We launched the Bloomsbury 2030 vision this time last year with three pillars of growth, portfolio, and people. In terms of growth, this year, we set out to accomplish three key goals. First, growth through acquisition, which we accomplished in May via the Rowman & Littlefield purchase. We look forward to more opportunities of this sort. Second, growth through global diversification. We now have 78% of revenue coming from outside of the U.K. market, and we are continuing to expand. As the U.S. leader, I am proud to highlight that Bloomsbury is now one of the top 10 commercial publishers in the U.S. This year, we have had a number of New York Times bestsellers. Among them, you see two here, Blind Spots by Marty Makary, and All the Blues in the Sky by Renee Watson.
Our third key goal for the year was growth via speed to market, increased efficiency, and scale. We have recently completed one of the largest distribution moves here in the U.K. by transitioning Hachette U.K. to Hachette U.K. distribution. We thought you might like an idea of the scale of that operation in this video.
This is the celebration of Bloomsbury and the Hachette U.K. distribution. Today marks pretty much the completion of the pre-go live project, which has been going on for 13 months now.
For many Bloomsbury staff, this is the first time we've been to the warehouse. Could you please describe today in just one word?
Exciting.
Beginning.
I would say joyous.
We're going to go on a tour with Matt, Mark from Hachette, and of course, Nigel.
This is the goods in department. This is essentially where we receive all the books into the warehouse. We can receive up to about 500 pallets a day into this area, equivalent of about 500,000 books. Essentially, this is where it all starts. We have moved 7 million Bloomsbury books, over 16,000 titles. We are going to move files for over 65,000 POD titles. We have moved 110,000 records from our Biblio system into Hachette U.K.'s SAP system. We have done a lot of work here, and we are all very, very excited at what is a new era for Bloomsbury.
How do you feel seeing the first box?
It's amazing to have Bloomsbury in and going live. This is the first of thousands, if not millions, in the years ahead.
Trillions.
It's so wonderful that we're all meeting our opposite numbers.
It's been absolutely brilliant. Just the most exciting partnership. I can't wait.
Good morning, everyone. I'm Maya Abu-Deeb, and I'm General Counsel and Company Secretary. In the Bloomsbury 2030 vision, the portfolio goals include becoming the most successful independent publisher in the humanities and social sciences, which we have made huge strides in over the last year. Jenny has detailed our optimism for the midterm outlook. In our consumer division, we have delivered 3% growth on top of an extraordinary year last year and have bestsellers across genre in our portfolio. I will now hand over to Karl Burnett, Director of People and Engagement.
Thank you, Maya. Good morning, everyone. You will have heard Sabrina talk about the three pillars of our 2030 Bloomsbury vision. The third pillar is around our people. Our ambition there is, in simple terms, to be the best place to work in publishing. We believe we're well on our way to achieving this. That is evidenced through the staff survey that we completed by all of our employees that led us to being awarded Great Place to Work certification in all four of the countries where we have offices. We're building the breadth and the talent of the team, doing that through attracting major talent from across the industry and beyond, not to mention our hundred or so colleagues from Rowman & Littlefield. We've created a senior leadership team with representation across the entire business.
We have multiple training and networking opportunities to help shape the future of Bloomsbury. Now I'll hand over to Kathleen Farrar, our Managing Director of Group Sales and Marketing.
Thanks, Karl. Hello. Audio is a high-growth area for us, with revenue up 57% on last year. Therefore, we thought it was time it took the spotlight. We have an award-winning team who have built a strong backlist, engaged high-profile narrators, and continue to innovate in this exciting market. In November 2024, we launched our audio catalog on Spotify, expanding the potential for us and the market. We are delighted to see the breadth of the Spotify audience across our range of audiobooks. Now onto our upcoming titles. Many of our new titles for 2025-2026 are from our bestselling authors such as Samantha Shannon, Kathryn Rundell, Elizabeth Gilbert, Paul Hollywood, and Tom Kerridge. We want to highlight titles already bestselling in the US this year, such as Money, Lies, and God, The Trouble with Heroes, as our U.S. team goes from strength to strength.
In academic and professional, we're very excited for the launch of two key brand partnerships. The first with Marvel for Marvel Age of Comics series, starting in November, and the second with Spotify with their tie-in audio editions of 33 1/3. Looking to our innovative publishing of the Harry Potter series, we are publishing Pocket Potters with a book per character, which is nicely timed to benefit from new screen adaptations. With our lead titles in mind, we thought you might like a little insight into our team selling the full depth and breadth of our list at the London Book Fair. Here is the video.
If that looked exhausting at the London Book Fair, I believe it was. Hundreds and hundreds of meetings with publishers from all over the world. It is just a huge engine of business for us. How is that? One year's activity in 26 minutes speed reporting. It falls to me to give you the summary and outlook. We have seen yet again in the last year the flywheel effect spinning its virtuous circle of investment in content, driving demand and generating cash to fund further investment. Over the next year, we are trying to capitalize on that huge growth in student numbers projected in Asia by opening an office in Singapore. A great deal of work has gone into studying exactly how we should tackle the market. We are starting with our academic list. You have seen the deals done by our large academic competitors in AI training deals.
These deals are very significant. We are now engaged in that at the moment. We are prioritizing the best interests of our authors because it is a very complex world what the implications of it are going to be. We are doing it very carefully and sensitively. Finally, trading is expected to be broadly in line with consensus expectations in constant currency. Here is one of my favorite slides to follow, the Publisher of the Year award, which was given particularly to our adults division run by Ian and Kathleen. It was a very exciting moment. It came close to midnight, the 36th of 36 awards in the Grosvenor House Hotel Ballroom, which I am sure many of you know and associate with falling asleep while wearing a black tie.
I would like particularly to thank Bloomsbury staff worldwide, many of whom will be viewing this streaming for their part in our getting that award. And my EC colleagues, executive committee colleagues, all ranged for you to meet some of them for the first time today, showing you the strength and depth of the Bloomsbury bench and our board of directors represented by our Chairman today. So thank you all. Most of all, thank you for coming to the Bloomsbury breakfast that has an analyst meeting attached as an add-on. It is good to see you all. Thank you very much. Now we will have questions and answers.
Penny and I will be the two people answering questions. Penny is going to be the chair of this session. If I am fortunate, answer all the questions. Penny, over to you.
Thank you, Nigel. We'll be taking questions from the room and also from people watching online. Al, can we start with you?
Thank you. Alastair Rubenson, Best Tech. Sorry.
Thanks. Yeah, three from me. Firstly, in academic publishing, could you expand a little bit more on what you're seeing from a macro perspective in terms of sort of budgetary pressures and whether you see those sort of manifest in terms of lower new customer additions, slightly less demand from existing customers, lower pricing power, or any of those factors? Thank you. Secondly, obviously, sort of change in language around sort of AI licensing deals. Could you sort of give us any color in terms of what you sort of think or hope in terms of timing? And is there any way that we can sort of think about the quantum of what that might be? And then lastly, possibly one for Ian, if allowed.
For sort of a hypothetical potential bestseller, what would be the sort of typical time frame in terms of the gap between feeling confident to announce it and it hitting the bookshelves? Thanks.
Thank you. Starting with the academic, the macro point, I think we talked a lot about this at the interim where we were seeing the U.K. pressures in the U.S. At the time, that was really we were seeing significant pressures on the U.S. for the smaller and mid-sized institutions. I think since then, that's continued. What we've seen has been very, very widely reported has been some more budgetary pressures on the larger institutions as well. That's very high profile. That's not unique to us. I think that is tough in those environments. I think the U.S. and the U.K. are big markets for us.
That is why, rather than sitting here going, okay, we have got those pressures, we are really looking to where the student numbers are growing and where markets, I think, are being more agile about attracting students rather than maybe regulatory pressures putting them off. That is a real focus for us. Nigel, do you want to take the point about AI?
Yeah. I think soon is the answer to your AI question. Now is the moment. Now is when the big AI companies are gearing up and trying to ingest huge amounts of language into their learning models. If anything, we've deliberately hung back because you've seen deals announced more than a year ago by our larger competitors. I think we've been wise to do so because more people have entered the markets and on the basis of paying for it. The great issue for our industry is the wholesale heist, which is going on by some AI companies and just appropriating our authors' content to themselves with no payment.
There are good guys out there who are prepared to pay for us and enjoy a lot of benefits from paying for it, such as clear legal title to what they're doing and not making themselves potentially exposed to the kind of lawsuits that are flying around at the moment from people who have not observed that. As for quantum, I cannot say. I can only tell you that we have built up through our more than 30 acquisitions over 20 years a formidable bank of content. In the AI game, quantity is the name of that game because they are kind of trying to replicate the whole of human knowledge. People who have a really substantial repository of it, as we do in Bloomsbury Academic, are of considerable interest to them. I can say no more. I can refer you to the other deals that have been publicly announced.
They are, of course, in the tens of millions. We will see. We are going to do it sensibly.
On your last point, the time frame, I'm going to say, and this is absolutely true, it really depends. It depends on the book. It depends on the publicity and all these number of things. We can't give you, I know you'd love it, it's 6.5 months. It hugely depends on the timing when we want to do something in the market and what we need to do with the book to get there. Thank you. Great. Will.
Thanks. Will Loward from Berenberg. Just a couple from me. Firstly, on the opening of the Asian office, I just wondered if you could spend a little bit more on that, sort of particularly on the size of it, number of people, the investment going into it, and also how long it typically takes for that to ramp up before it's starting to contribute meaningfully. Secondly, just in terms of the audio sort of opportunity, obviously delivered strong growth there. Just maybe a little bit of color about how much was backlist versus frontlist and how we should think about that opportunity in the future.
Yeah. I think the Asia office, what we're doing is we're really building on the experience we already have across different parts of Asia, both in India and Australia. We're starting quite small. We'll be building up to five staff there. What we're doing is really taking the world-class global content we have, particularly some of the RNL content, which was very US-focused. What we're doing is really tailoring it for the market, both from what is the content, curating the content, but also how we sell it and who we sell it to. It's incredibly important. The academic market is one, particularly BDR, where we sell directly. Those personal relationships are incredibly important. I think we have a, I mean, I think you've seen the scale of our ambition with our BDR target.
You know how focused we've been on building up the content to do it. For us, this is really expanding into a market that's higher growth. With the audio opportunity, I think we talk about our, I think we've seen generally our revenue is more backlist-weighted. That's part of our resilience and the strengths of our portfolios for that. I think with audio, it very much depends on what titles are coming out. I think we see that similar breadth across both frontlist and backlist. I think the audio opportunity, you've seen that scale of growth coming through. The more we learn about it, the better we're getting at it, which titles work well on audio. We're seeing anecdotally that podcasts are actually driving people to audiobooks. You get used to really hearing that quite long form, particularly some of the non-fiction discursive content.
It's a really exciting market for us. I think we shared with you at the interim and now again today how exciting it's been for Spotify to come in as a strong player, but really opening up and increasing the size of the market has been really interesting. We're really excited about it. It's my excited face. Great. Fiona.
Thanks. It is Fiona Rawford Williams from Edison. Your BDR target is still quite ambitious to get to that for 2027. You talked about new subject verticals. Do you just want to talk us a little bit more about how you get to that? I think there is 11% CAGR to do from here to there. That is the first one. The second one, in terms of Asian markets, can you tell us a little bit more about what is going on in India and China and what the potential, what has been happening? Thank you.
Yes. So BDR, absolutely. We've used the word ambitious. And it really is. The reason it's ambitious as opposed to delusional is because what we're seeing is when we brought in the RNL content, as we shared with you when we did the acquisition, that had been digitized into the extent of basic e-books. But it hadn't had the opportunity. So none of that content was in great databases. What we're starting to do with our first 5,300 titles in a couple of weeks' time, a couple of weeks, three weeks' time is going to be the first of those products rolling out. Not only are we going to be expanding our existing base, which we will need to push hard on, but also we are going to be selling those 41,000 titles, creating both collections but also products from those. That's that process there.
Asia, I think China is not a particular focus for us from an academic perspective. I think we have said Singapore. Our research is very much focused on where we can see the opportunities for us with our content. Yeah.
India is a powerhouse with rapidly growing student numbers and well funded.
Steve.
Yeah. Hi. Steve Lischte from Deutsche Numis. I'll take two, please. Thank you. One is, I mean, maybe on the big author release question. If we think back to the last Sarah J. Maas release, which was February 2024, can you just remind us of the timeline that that worked through your system in terms of maybe a raw manuscript being delivered through to and I guess the process through to announcement of the launch and stuff like that?
Your second question?
I was going to let you do that one first.
Okay.
Second one would be just on the US. I mean, it does feel like the environment has got worse in academic given various personalities over there. Just can you give us any anecdotes or hints in terms of how that's manifested itself for you in terms of selling stuff in the US and whether it's affecting contract negotiations, renegotiations, retention, or whatever you can give us there, really, just to help us. Thanks.
Yeah. Coming to your first question then about Sarah J. Maas, we do not talk about timelines publicly at all. I think what we have said before, we have said she has announced the next book will be the next in the ACOTAR, A Court of Thorns and Roses. Steve, I know you know the series very well. That ACOTAR series, when she announces it to her fans, we will also share that news with you all. Coming on to the second point around the academic environment, it absolutely has got tougher. We have been really clear about that. I am sure you are reading about that almost daily. I think we have most seen the budget pressure as opposed to any other types of pressure coming in. I think that has manifested in the numbers that we have shared with you.
I think the resilience of BDR means that people do want to buy that when they can. We saw, I think two years ago, we were seeing 40% growth. I think that's really part of that was a huge acceleration. I think we're just seeing that sort of just that sort of general tightness, I think, is a fair way of putting it. Is that fair? Yeah. Great. Hi, Jess.
Hi. It's Jessica Park from Peel Hunt.
Sure.
Thank you. Jessica Park from Peel Hunt. I've got two, please. Can you just talk a little bit about whether tariffs has an impact on your supply chain? And then just the second one. Can you remind us the last Sarah J. Maas book, when the paperback came out, what was the impact of that versus the hardback? And do you expect a similar kind of impact for the new one coming out in June?
Yeah. Tariffs, as we've said, we are relatively lucky in that books coming into the U.S. are exempt from tariffs. I mean, there's a small thing if they're coming directly in from China. Otherwise, we're in a much better position than so many people. We're really grateful for that. We've also built up a very agile supply chain over one of the many things we've learned over the last five years, Nigel, hasn't it? Being that we have to really, and in fact, our Production Director, Steven, is in the U.S. at the moment busy making sure that we can print and distribute entirely in the U.S. so that we can minimize the impact of a supply chain. We use the same containers, the same ships as everyone else. It doesn't matter if you're motorbikes or Christmas decorations or books.
We work very hard to do that. As we have talked about in the outlook, we are very cognizant of punchy macroeconomic factors, which are, as you are all very, very well aware, really punchy. I think coming back to your point about the hardbacks and the paperback, the paperback of our most recent title with her was House of Flame and Shadow, which came out at the end of January 2024. That did so well that we have actually pushed out the date of the paperback to June this year. Normally, we would do it a year. I think we see with any publication, we see a great uplift in its great marketing and publicity opportunity to remind people, and people hear about it and go, "Let's come to the backlist." Nigel, do you want to talk more about that?
The paperback, after these huge hardcover launches, becomes the vehicle for the sales long into the future. Bearing in mind that the first books in A Court of Thorns and Roses, which is just one of her three series, are over 10 years old, it is the paperbacks that are doing the heavy lifting in the bookshops. Just to remind you that based on the Arkana points of sale data, Sarah J. Maas was the biggest selling author in the English language in the world last year, leading by miles in America. That is not really based on one title. It is based on the aggregate of 16 different titles. That is where we are so fortunate because readers become hooked on one series and then, in many cases, will go and read through the other series as well.
It's all about the paperback in the long run.
Okay. I'm in.
Thanks. Iain Daly from H2 Radnor. Looking out to the current financial year, if we look at consumer, would you characterize it being a year where you're going to double down on the existing genre successes that you already have? Or do you see potential for new genres to come into play for you the current year?
No, absolutely. I think what Ian and Kathleen talked about was the breadth of what we are doing, not only across formats. We see audio expanding into—we started, sort of, certain genres work better in audio to start with, but we are seeing that really expanding. No, we have absolutely talked about the range and breadth in our portfolio within consumer. We have absolutely continued to expand it. More commercial publishing. You saw one of our amazing authors this morning, and hopefully, you all had some of his amazing pastries. No, absolutely. I think it is a sort of combination of expanding the portfolio but remaining very focused on what we can do well as opposed to a sort of scatter gun approach. No, absolutely. More fantasy, more, more, more.
Can I have a go too?
Yes. Sorry.
Ian, is it September we're launching the Bloomsbury Archer list?
Yes. Our first book in the list will be, I think, October.
In October.
Also earning flowers, Samantha Shannon.
Samantha Shannon. This is a big initiative for us in the fantasy area in which Bloomsbury can be said to have been pioneers of a sort. We are doubling down on our success there. To mention a kind of subgenre, we have been a very strong publisher in crime fiction through The Raven List. We added another editor there who is focusing on a different kind of crime novel, moving from, I am not sure how we would characterize it, hard psychological crime to cozy crime. We have had a stunning success with an early book in that new venture called A Case of Murder in the Temple by Sally Smith, writing about the enclosed world of the temple, which is like the Vatican City.
It has its own laws, its own police forces, starting with the murder of the Lord Chief Justice on the steps of his own chambers in page one in 1904. The paperback of that book, which came out in hardcover in July last year, came out last month and was chosen as Waterstones' Thriller of the Month. That is the kind of oxygen we need in growing a new list. The second book in the series, the second hardcover, will come out in July. We are very active in backing the successes within some of the genres and areas that we are in, not least in cookery, as you saw in meeting Matthew Ryle next door.
Thank you.
Okay. Any last questions?
Over here.
Oh, yes. Hi, Caroline.
Thank you. Actually, I make a comment and a question. I think it's great to have the whole senior leadership here, and even more so because it's a majority of women there, which obviously is very pleasing.
Oh, my God.
Sorry, chaps. I had a question on the Hachette, the distribution. I saw the video earlier. I'm not actually exactly sure how you managed your distribution before. It'd be helpful if you could expand on that and explain what Hachette brings you. Is it faster route to market? Is it cost efficiencies? Also, if you can expand a bit more on the benefits, please.
It's an interesting story. We've been very well served for, I think, more than 20 years by Macmillan Distribution, who are based in Swansea and Basingstoke. We fully expected to be renewing that contract. We did the benchmarking that you do at the end of any contract term. That forced some members of the team you see sitting to the left and right of me to go to Didcot and see this completely state-of-the-art warehouse. I think it's the tallest warehouse in Europe. It's built on the site of one of those old cooling towers that you may remember from going through Didcot Station. It's by far the most modern facility in book distribution anywhere. More significantly, it's not only the hardware of all those wonderful lifts and so on, which I was terrified to go up in myself.
Their software is completely brilliant. That, which we were relying on with our third-party distributor previously, was really sunsetting. We are very lucky to—so why have we done this? A, the pricing is keen. B, we genuinely believe in the long run we will sell more books due to the efficiencies that they bring to us. It was a massive enterprise, this move. We had, was it 10 million books out on the M4 running in Swansea and Didcot. Fortunately, they turned left where they should have, and the books arrived at their destination. I have never seen, knock on wood, a distribution move—the largest publishing move in history of English language books—go so smoothly. Fingers crossed. We are very excited to be there.
I'm not sure if the video showed this, but we had a bagpiper pipe in the first book, followed by a procession of 350 of their warehouse workers, each carrying a different book. It was quite memorable.
Okay. Cheeky last question.
This is the Columbo technique.
Just because it's your birthday.
Sorry, just to follow up. We obviously touched on some of the sort of budgetary macro pressures on academic publishing, I guess, particularly in the US and the UK. Has that changed your acquisition appetite at all, particularly in the US? How is your sort of acquisition pipeline generally?
Our acquisition appetite remains absolutely undimmed. I mean, I think we've shared with you before that within 24 hours of completing Rowman & Littlefield, our head of M&A had emailed Nigel and I the list of his next 10 targets. We were like, "Surely everyone just needs some sleep." Absolutely remains undimmed. We're very mindful of we've got the GBP 24 million loan that we want to pay off. We're balancing that. No, we're very actively pursuing opportunities. I think we've talked about our confidence in the academic market and so on. The Rowman & Littlefield, we're really pleased with that acquisition, both the strengths of the content, the talent that we brought in, how well the integration has gone and is going. I think that gives us even more confidence for the future. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you all very much for coming.
Thank you so much, everyone.