Harry is wizard for Bloomsbury
THE Harry Potter phenomenon continues, with publisher Bloomsbury revealing pre-orders for the new title are 'substantially higher than originally anticipated'.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth in the series, is out on 16 July. The children's edition has been number one in the Amazon.co.uk bestseller list for weeks, with the adult edition at number three.
The Potter effect allowed chief executive Nigel Newton to predict 2005 profits will be 'not less than £20m'. City analysts had been forecasting around £18m.
Bloomsbury revealed that profits last year rose 7% to £16.4m on sales up 1.6% at £84.4m in a year when there was no new Potter title. The dividend is lifted 40% to 3p, paid out of earnings of 17.3p a share.
The publisher had number one bestsellers in the world's top three book markets last year. These were Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke in the US, Sheila Hancock's The Two of Us in the UK and Schotts Sammelsurium (Original Miscellany) in Germany. The first two named come out in paperback this year.
So far in 2005, Bloomsbury has published the latest edition of Who's Who and has two new books in the bestseller lists. New titles are also due from John Irving and Ben Schott.
Newton said that Bloomsbury had now established itself as a fully-fledged international publisher in the world's most-important markets.
