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Atlantic’s revenue dropped in 2016 following a 20% slump in e-book sales, but the indie publisher’s managing director has said the firm is on course to make a profit this year for the first time since 2009.
Atlantic’s revenue in 2016 was £5.5m, down by £0.5m year-on- year, while losses grew to £600,000, from £168,000 the year before.
However, with only December left to go before the end of the year, Atlantic’s managing director Will Atkinson said he expected the publisher to make a profit for the first time in eight years in 2017.
He said: “We are on the classic three-year turnaround. It takes time to rebuild a business. In 2015 we did reasonably well, we had a big bestseller and our e-books were selling strongly.
"In 2016 we were 8% down in turnover. E-books are a big part of what we do and they were down by 20%. But physical is so strong it is more than making up for it.
“In 2017 we have performed so well and I expect we will make a profit this year.”
The company’s top sellers in 2016 were Holly Seddon’s Try Not to Breathe, which at one point was the second bestselling e-book in May, Nocturnal Animals by Austin Wright and Killing Pablo by Mark Bowden.
Atkinson said a sharp fall in e-book sales last year had hit the firm’s profit as more corporate publishers compete in the lower price e-book market where smaller independent publishers once thrived. “We are being squeezed twice on e-books, by the corporate publishers pricing lower, which they can and I think should do, and Amazon’s own eco-system of authors published by Amazon,” Atkinson said. “But at the same time, Amazon are quite happy to sell our e-books so I can’t complain.”
Atkinson added that in 2017 he expected revenue to be up around 15-20%. “This is really about rebuilding the business again, and building a publishing team which the agent community know and trust,” he said. “We are confident we are going to turn a profit for 2017. We still have December to go, but we are very nearly there. It won’t be a huge profit, but it will be the first since 2009."
Atkinson also added that in 2016 “to be honest, we didn’t have the copyrights there" he said the publisher "does now" and he was “excited” for 2018 and 2019. “It will be my first total list,” he said.
Atkinson was hired as Atlantic’s managing director in October 2014 from his position as sales and marketing director at Faber two months after Atlantic founder and chief executive Toby Mundy left, and eight months after Allen & Unwin became the publisher's majority shareholder.
At the time of his appointment, Atkinson said he planned to grow the business and ensure that a “maximum readership is found and made for each one of Atlantic's writers”.