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Specialist academic and religious publisher Continuum is to release "a significant collection" of Bible studies e-books after recording a year of "the first organic [sales] growth enjoyed by the company’s core operations for many years".
Although the publisher still made an overall loss for the year to 30th June, this dropped from £6.4m in the previous period to £2.1m. Turnover for the whole group grew from £11.3m to £11.4m, while revenues from the publishing arm grew 3% from £9.1m to £9.4m.
Continuum also improved gross margin, from 45% to 59%, thanks to "significant changes in strategy", which chairman Patrick Austen said was "a trend we expect to continue".
Oliver Gadsby, who became chief executive of Continuum on 1st July 2007, said: "Clearly we are not content with being a loss-making company, and are on a rapid ascent towards making a profit."
He explained: "At the start of the [financial] year we decided what we wanted to be as a company, and focused on that activity well. We exited the marketing services we ran in the US, moved away from book distribution, and focused on the publishing business—to make sure we publish on time, at the right price, and at a high quality."
A swathe of changes were also made to the publishing arm, including expanding the editorial team, particularly in arts and humanities, and the launch of an e-book programme, which has seen digital versions of front and backlist titles brought to market.
The publisher is now looking to launch more than 380 titles from The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies. Continuum said the series was "an essential resource" for Bible studies students.
Gadsby said the launch took the total number of e-books "from a standing start to 1,200 in just over a year". The company is planning to expand this to 2,000 by the end of 2009.
He acknowledged this year was presenting a tough market in which to become profitable—particularly in the US, which makes up nearly half of Continuum’s revenues, but Gadsby was optimistic. "We have all sorts of good things going on, including a big programme for this spring and the continued momentum of the e-book list," he said. "We are reminaing very positive in what is admittedly a more difficult climate." The next six months is about "heads down and getting on with the improvement", he added.