Status | Active |
---|---|
Traded as |
|
Founded | 26 September 1986 |
Country of origin | United Kingdom |
Headquarters location | London, England |
Distribution | Macmillan Publishers Services (UK, US) United Book Distributors (Australia) |
Key people | |
Publication types | Books, digital content products, and online resources such as databases |
Imprints |
|
ISIN | GB0033147751 |
Founder | Nigel Newton |
Headquarters | |
Revenue | £264.1 million (2023) [2] |
£25.6 million (2023) [2] | |
£20.2 million (2023) [2] | |
Official website | bloomsbury |
Bloomsbury Publishing plc is a British worldwide publishing house of fiction and non-fiction. 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 Australian sales office in Sydney CBD, and other publishing offices in the UK, including in Oxford. It is a constituent of the FTSE SmallCap Index.
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 further raised £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. [3] The Walker brand was discontinued in 2015 and sold to Walker Publishing Company. [4] [5]
In December 2008, Bloomsbury opened a branch in Doha, Qatar in a joint-partnership with Qatar Foundation. [6] The partnership created a publishing house, Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing; it worked mainly with English and Arabic literature. [7]
Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Journals (BQFJ), an open access and 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. [8] 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. [9]
In 2012, Bloomsbury established a publishing office in India. [10] In May 2023, an article in The Verge reported that the cover of the UK edition of House of Earth and Blood, published by Bloomsbury, uses an AI-generated image. [11]
In 2018, it was confirmed that much of the company's growth over the previous two decades was attributable to the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling. [12]
Among the companies, book lists and imprints that Bloomsbury has acquired are: [13]
Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. It has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by the Germany-based media conglomerate Bertelsmann.
Simon & Schuster LLC is an American publishing company owned by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924, by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. Along with Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins and Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster is considered one of the 'Big Five' English language publishers. As of 2017 Simon & Schuster was the third largest publisher in the United States, publishing 2,000 titles annually under 35 different imprints.
Hachette Livre is a French publishing group that was based in Paris. It was founded in 1826 by Louis Hachette as Brédif which later became successively L. Hachette et Compagnie, Librairie Hachette, Hachette SA and is then currently known in France as Hachette Livre. After acquiring an Australian publisher, Hachette Australia was created; in the UK it became Hachette UK, and its expansion into the United States became Hachette Book Group.
Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development is a state-led non-profit organization in Qatar, founded in 1995 by then-emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani and his second wife Moza bint Nasser Al-Missned.
Pearson Education, known since 2011 as simply Pearson, is the educational publishing and services subsidiary of the international corporation Pearson plc. The subsidiary was formed in 1998, when Pearson plc acquired Simon & Schuster's educational business and combined it with Pearson's existing education company Addison-Wesley Longman. Pearson Education was restyled as simply Pearson in 2011. In 2016, the diversified parent corporation Pearson plc rebranded to focus entirely on education publishing and services, and as of 2023 Pearson Education is Pearson plc's main subsidiary.
Ingram Content Group is an American service provider to the book publishing industry, based in La Vergne, Tennessee. It is a subsidiary of Ingram Industries.
Barnes & Noble Education, Inc. is one of the largest operators of college bookstores in the United States. As of the end of 2020, Barnes & Noble Education operated 760 campus bookstores and school-branded e-commerce sites through its Barnes & Noble College Booksellers division. The company is headquartered in Basking Ridge, New Jersey.
Hachette Book Group (HBG) is a publishing company owned by Hachette Livre, the largest publishing company in France, and the third largest trade and educational publisher in the world. Hachette Livre is a wholly owned subsidiary of Lagardère Group. HBG was formed when Hachette Livre purchased the Time Warner Book Group from Time Warner on March 31, 2006. Its headquarters are located at 1290 Avenue of the Americas, Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Hachette is considered one of the "big five" publishing companies, along with Holtzbrinck/Macmillan, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster. In one year, HBG publishes approximately 1400+ adult books, 300 books for young readers, and 450 audiobook titles. In 2017, the company had 167 books on the New York Times bestseller list, 34 of which reached No. 1.
Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group is an American independent academic publishing company founded in 1949. Under several imprints, the company offers scholarly books for the academic market, as well as trade books. The company also owns the book distributing company National Book Network based in Lanham, Maryland.
I.B. Tauris is an educational publishing house and imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing. It was an independent publishing house with offices in London and New York City until its purchase in May 2018 by Bloomsbury Publishing.
Welbeck Publishing Group, formerly Carlton Publishing Group, is a London-based independent book publisher of fiction, narrative and illustrated non-fiction, as well as gift and children's books. Established in 2019 by Executive Directors Mark Smith and Marcus Leaver, the business specialises in commercial publishing in 30 languages and in more than 60 countries around the world, across all genres and categories.
Arcadia Publishing is an American publisher of neighborhood, local, and regional history of the United States in pictorial form. Arcadia Publishing also runs the History Press, which publishes text-driven books on American history and folklore.
Perseus Books Group was an American publishing company founded in 1996 by investor Frank Pearl. Perseus acquired the trade publishing division of Addison-Wesley in 1997.
Sourcebooks LLC is an American independent book publisher located in Naperville, Illinois. The company publishes books, eBooks, and digital products.
The Quarto Group is a global illustrated book publishing group founded in 1976. It is domiciled in the United States and listed on the London Stock Exchange.
Sheed and Ward is a publishing house founded in London in 1926 by Catholic activists Frank Sheed and Maisie Ward. The head office was moved to New York in 1933. The United States assets of Sheed and Ward have been owned by Rowman & Littlefield since 2002, and those in the United Kingdom are owned by Bloomsbury Publishing. In 2022 Rowman & Littlefield began acquiring books under the Sheed & Ward brand again.
Readerlink Distribution Services, is a publisher and distributor of books based in Oak Brook, Illinois. Readerlink is the largest distributor of books to mass merchandisers in United States, and the largest distributor of hardcover, trade and paperback books to non-trade channel booksellers in North America. Servicing approximately 66,000 storefronts in the United States, Readerlink distributes approximately one out of every three consumer trade books sold in the country. As of 2016, the company has distribution centers in Clearfield, Utah; Denton, Texas; Romeoville, Illinois; Salem, Virginia; and Winder, Georgia. Dennis E. Abboud serves as Readerlink's President and CEO.
Hamad Bin Khalifa University is a public university located within Education City in Doha, the capital city of Qatar. The university, a member of Qatar Foundation, was founded in 2010. The university began graduating students in 2014. It was named after Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, former Emir of Qatar.
RBMedia is an audiobook publishing company with sales globally. Headquartered in Landover, Maryland, it claims to be the largest audiobook publisher in the world.
Hamad Bin Khalifa University Press is a publishing house based in Doha, Qatar. The press was initially managed by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC and was founded as Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing (BQFP) in 2008 until its transition into HBKU Press in 2015. HBKU Press is part of Hamad Bin Khalifa University which is under the wider community of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development. It publishes titles that serve both an international audience as well as the larger Arab community publishing fiction, non-fiction, young adult and children's literature, and academic titles. They highlight local Middle Eastern and Qatari narratives and also translate books from other foreign languages into Arabic.