With sales in both its co-edition and publishing divisions showing gains, revenue at Quarto Group rose 5.5% in 2011 to $186.1 million, the U.K.-based publisher reported. Adjusted pretax profits rose to $12.1 million from $11.5 million. The gains came despite only minor improvement in the U.S., which accounted for 55% of revenue. Sales in the U.S. rose 1%, to $82.8 million, as the acquisition Cool Springs Press (for $3 million) and sales of its Walter Foster imprint offset soft results in Quarto’s transportation and graphic design lists.
 
In breaking down results by segment, publishing sales rose 6%, to $123.6 million, helped by the Cool Springs purchase as well as that of the U.K.’s Frances Lincoln (for $7.3 million). E-book sales rose 500%, but at $2.1 million, comprise only a small portion of overall revenue. In his chairman’s statement, Laurence Orbach acknowledged that Quarto is moving cautiously in the e-book field, believing that the technology is not yet developed enough to allow Quarto to put its almost entirely nonfiction books into enhanced digital formats. " [Our] efforts to build both apps and e-books around the kind of content we create have not been well rewarded,” Orbach wrote. “This is not surprising, as they have not taken advantage of the benefits that the new tablet computers and e-readers now offer. At the moment, and seeking to take advantage of better and less cumbersome software authoring tools, more efforts are being made to create enhanced e-books. No doubt, some will turn out to be very fine, but it remains unclear whether there is a profitable commercial model lurking in all of the experimentation.”