Past-paper boom for Bright Red Publishing

Published on Thursday 22 July 2010 14:07

AN ACADEMIC publishing house founded by the former management team at Leckie & Leckie, has reported a move into profit and a 22-fold rise in revenues after beating their former employer to a key contract.

Bright Red Publishing was launched three years ago by John MacPherson, Sarah Mitchell, Alan Grierson and Richard Bass, after a management buyout attempt was rejected.

They have now won a deal to publish the Scottish Qualification Authority's past papers at the end of 2008 - business won from Leckie & Leckie which had held the contract for the previous eight years.

The contract raised the number of books published by Bright Red from around a dozen in its first year of trading, to more than 80 last year.

"We were surprised and delighted when we won the SQA tender," said MacPherson, formerly commissioning editor at Leckie & Leckie. "We put in a good pitch, but we thought they would consider us to be too young a publishing house. We were very happy to find out we won the contract."

The Edinburgh-based firm is to open a distribution warehouse in Kirkcaldy, Fife, next month. MacPherson said he expected the business to show continued growth in the current year - despite planned cutbacks in the public sector.

"School budgets have already been really squeezed for the past two or three years," he said. The firm will report a pre-tax profit of 8,385 in the 12 months to the end of March, compared with a loss of 271,864 in 2009, according to accounts due to be filed. Turnover grew to 924,329 - up from 42,569 the previous year.