Fifteen years ago Bloomsbury announced a new structure for its business that focused on the notion that publishing would become increasingly more global. “The global marketplace is changing rapidly, with a dramatic increase in digital publishing and global customers, such as Amazon, Google and Apple, who are not focused within national boundaries,” said founder and chief executive Nigel Newton at the time. This week, the company consciously unglobaled, “verticalising” its business into three distinct divisions comprising Bloomsbury Global Academic & Professional, Bloomsbury USA and Bloomsbury Consumer UK, each with their own localised sales, marketing and publicity teams. “By aligning our business units more closely with our key markets, we can respond to changing tastes and customer preferences,” said Newton.

Verticalisation is not a new word in publishing: historically it was used when the big trade publishers of yore also began publishing paperbacks out of their hardback strongholds. Before that, these mass-market editions might have come from a separate unit or perhaps from a different publisher altogther or from a third-party specialist. On this occasion, the term is used to describe the creation of these discrete publishing units responsible, essentially, for everything publishing and sales-related that happens in their home markets.

I do not wish to over-egg this. Chief architect of the global approach, Richard Charkin, left in 2018, and his most recent successor, consumer MD Ian Hudson, led a more nuanced business that could service universal superstars such as Sarah J Maas as well as local heroes such as Katherine Rundell, ushering in an exceptional period of growth, culminating in the adult division winning Publisher of the Year at The British Book Awards just one year ago.

Bloomsbury often acts as a bellwether, and the risk to 55 jobs is therefore of wider significance

Newton will argue that when the facts change, so do strategies, and rightly so. In 2011, Amazon looked unstoppable and Waterstones unrescuable, and neither of these are now true. That Hudson is to be replaced by Kathleen Farrar, who was MD of group sales and marketing across its global divisions and territories, signals a gear shift rather than an about-turn, an uncoupling from the thinking rather than a break with the past.

At its time, Charkin’s move prompted a useful discussion around English-language publishing and the rights that could be acquired for those books that might travel unhindered between different regions and how a joined-up approach would support this publishing better, partly because he was able to look at this as a dispassionate – and determinedly so – outsider. The matter was unresolved because agents were not convinced by the proposition and those publishers who could have forced the issue never did.

Bloomsbury’s press statement headlined the announcement: “Bloomsbury streamlines for growth” – but with the cost of up to 55 jobs, about 5% of its total workforce, the move is a little more complicated than that. Bloomsbury often acts as a bellwether for the sector, and the risk to 55 jobs is therefore of wider significance. The group’s headcount has shot up by 70%, from 738 to 1,238 in the past five years as sales have doubled (from £185m to £361m), so this might be characterised as a corrective measure, or – with costs rising and artificial intelligence said to be a threat to non-fiction sales and the specialist non-trade sector – a harbinger of things to come.

If the latter, then it is worth remembering that Bloomsbury is not always right: at the start of the pandemic it raised £8m from investors on fears that print sales would plunge. A prudent move, but the book business – as ever – provided a plot twist. Here, I hope the emphasis really is on the growth, not the streamlining.