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Atlantic Books is now “standing on its own two feet” as it begins to turn a profit after four years’ majority ownership under Allen & Unwin, m.d. Will Atkinson has told The Bookseller.
The company, in which Allen & Unwin became a majority shareholder in 2014, has been reliant on its parent. However, Atkinson said the company has been profitable since September 2017 and as such has “happily stopped taking money from them”. Atlantic’s revenue is currently up 42% for the first nine months of 2018 on last year, Atkinson said.
Atlantic Books’ accounts for 2017, filed this month at Companies House, did not disclose a profit and loss, but Atkinson told The Bookseller Atlantic Books' revenue for the 2017 financial year was “just shy of £5m” - down on the £5.5m it took in 2016 - with a loss of £71,000 (reduced from £659,000 in 2016).
Atkinson said it was “disappointing” to have made a loss at all in 2017 but branded it "a year in transition”, after which the company is now well placed to reap "good profits" in 2018 in the region of £200-300,000.
In 2017 Atkinson said there was "a lot of hammering away at the overhead line and making sure the books we do sell are profitable”. Giving Atlantic “more heft in the market”, Allen & Unwin merged the sales departments of Murdoch Books UK and Atlantic. Atlantic also reduced overall overheads by 3 people (or 10%), he said, and began selling more rights and more paperbacks, helping with print costs.
“It felt very much like a year in transition really, from the bad losses in 2016 to what I’m presuming will be good profit in 2018. It was a funny year, a ‘nearly kind of year’ I guess, but with a lot of very good things going on,” Atkinson said. "Our e-book sales [which suffered downturn of 20% - £300,000 - in 2016] are now flying again, which is great. We’re wrestling with things like stock and our provisioning is very tough. We had good rights sales and good physical publishing and been holding the line on 'e'. Non-fiction sales, which have been quiet since I arrived, are also now starting to kick in."
He added: "No one likes to make a loss. In terms of this operating loss of £71k, it was pretty close and I thought we would make it, I have to say, and we didn’t quite. But since September we have been going like gangbusters, we’ve had 12 brilliant months. There is gold at the end of the rainbow.
"2017 is not exactly a year to forget. The overall result may not have been fabulous; but, from where we’ve come from, it’s great, and the work we did is a precursor to some of the success we’re having now.”
Stand-out successes for Atlantic Books this year include two film tie-ins, Andre Aciman’s Call Me By Your Name and Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians. Other highlights include, in fiction, Peter Cozzens’ The Earth is Weeping and Holly Seddon's Don’t close your Eyes and, in non-fiction, Isabel Hardman’s Why We Get the Wrong Politicians and James Bloodworth’s Hired.