Bloomsbury founder says death of print books is ‘greatly exaggerated’

The founder of Harry Potter publisher Bloomsbury yesterday said he saw “no evidence” that print books were a dying format as the group unveiled a surge in e-book sales.

The company behind major bestsellers such as Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Veg Everyday! and Jesmyn Ward’s novel Salvage the Bones saw a 70 per cent jump in e-book sales in the period from 1 March to 11 July, compared to a 2 per cent decline in print sales.

But chief executive and founder Nigel Newton said there was still a future for print, adding: “It will be a mixed market. Just as it has been for 40 years for hardback and paperback formats – it’s just another new format.”

The firm, which enjoyed great success from the seven-book Harry Potter series, benefited from having a number of prize-winning novels in its collection in the period, including Madeleine Miller’s The Song of Achilles, which won the Orange Prize.

Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack 2012, Ben MacIntyre’s Double Cross and Heston at Home by Heston Blumenthal also sold well, while a new cookery book from Fearnley-Whittingstall based on a 50-part television series is poised to be the next bestseller.

Newton, a dual US and UK citizen who founded the publisher in 1986, said the US was leading the way with the e-book market, with the UK one or two years behind.

“In terms of subjects, there are all sorts of trends,” he said. “Fiction is strongest. Genre fiction is particularly strong, where people read book after book.”