You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Simon & Schuster UK saw a marginal boost to profits in 2016, driven by Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run and its children’s division.
The chief executive and publisher of S&S UK, Ian Chapman, said that while’s the publisher’s sales were flat in 2016, its profits were marginally up for a second year in a row, although he declined to reveal figures.
“2015 was a good year in terms of profit and 2016 has taken us up another couple of percentage points in terms of profit margin,” Chapman said. “We had a number of bestselling books but Born To Run was amazing. We also saw success with Graham Swift’s Mothering Sunday which we sold 30,000 copies on in hardback, Ian Mcguire’s North Water, which was longlisted for the man Booker Prize.”
Chapman also revealed the publisher increased its share of the children’s fiction market by two percentage points to 5%.
“We had a pretty good time with children’s in 2016,” Chapman said. He listed World Book Day title Supertato by Sue Hendra as a particular success, along with Benji Davies’ The Storm Whale in Winter.
Chapman was speaking after S&S global results were released by parent company CBS Corporation, revealing that global revenues down by 10% to $209m (£167.05m) during the fourth quarter of 2016. However, operating income over the same period grew by 6% to $36m (£28.77m) as “lower production costs offset the decline in revenues”. The CBS Corporation does not break out UK results.
For the full year, the publisher achieved sales of $767m (£613.06m), down by $13m (1£0.39m) - but operating income stood at $119m, ahead of last year's $114m in profits.