‘Luxe’ Magazine Celebrates 15 Years With Redesign (mediapost.com)

Fourth Quarter Highlights: Total revenues increased 2.2 percent to $239.5 million, compared with $234.4 million in the prior year period. On a comparable basis1, revenues increased 2.9 percent. EPS was $0.12 per share compared with a loss of $0.17 per share in the prior year period. Adjusted EPS1 was a loss of $0.11 per share compared with a loss of $0.14 per share in the prior year period. EBITDA1, excluding stock-based compensation, was a loss of $2.2 million, compared with a loss of $6.0 million in the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA1 was a loss of $1.7 million compared with a loss of $2.9 million in the prior year period. Click Read More below for additional detail.

In late 2010, I was thinking quite a bit about book use in research libraries. The conventional wisdom was that “no one uses print books anymore” in libraries like mine, and indeed annual data provided by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) showed a pretty clear decline in book circulations: between 1991 and 2008 (the most recent data available at that time), the number of initial circulations in ARL libraries had fallen by over a quarter. And when I ventured into the book stacks in my own library I usually found them spookily deserted. But I was haunted by a passing comment a colleague had made to me a few years earlier, noting that the conclusions we draw from library usage data can easily be confounded by changes in the library’s user population. It occurred to me that if we really want to understand what’s happening with regard to library patrons and printed books, we need to take into account the changing nature of our patron base. And the simplest and most consistent change in that population is growth over time: university enrollment tends to grow from year to year. Click Read More below for more of the story.

Commenting on the results, Nigel Newton, Chief Executive, said: “Bloomsbury delivered excellent results in the first half with year-on-year revenue growth of 29% to £100.7 million and profit growth of 225% to £12.9 million. These are our highest ever first half sales and profits. These results demonstrate the strength and resilience of our strategy of publishing for both the consumer and academic markets, and our growth of digital revenues. Both divisions had outstanding performances. The Consumer division continued the momentum of last year with 29% revenue growth and a £5.6 million increase in profit before tax and highlighted items to £8.4 million. Bestsellers during the period included Tom Kerridge’s Outdoor Cooking, Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas, The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon and The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. Since the period end Bloomsbury authors have won two of the most important prizes in the literary world, The Nobel Prize for Literature and The Women’s Prize, which were won by Abdulrazak Gurnah and Susanna Clarke respectively. We congratulate them both. The Non-Consumer division saw 27% growth and a £3.2 million increase in profit before tax and highlighted items to £4.6 million. Bloomsbury Digital Resources grew by 44% in addition to a very strong recovery in print sales, which grew by 34%. The focus on our online academic digital resource strategy means we are well placed to continue to benefit from the accelerated shift by academic institutions to digital products to support hybrid learning.