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Sales and profit for 2011 have slumped at Edinburgh University Press at the same time the company has reported a 40% rise in year-on-year e-book sales.
The Scottish academic publisher has reported an 11.6% fall in sales and rights income in its annual financial results to 31st July 2011, from £2.73m in 2010 to £2.41m this year. At the same time, EUP’s net profits fell from £431,000 in July 2010 to £322,000 this year.
EUP chief executive Timothy Wright said: “The reason for the sales dip is because there were some specific one-off titles that did really well in 2010. We had one major reference book—The Atlas of Global Christianity—and a couple of others, and the Waverley Novels, that did extremely well for us and they all came in one financial year. We budgeted accordingly so that is why the results were not below budget this year.”
The publisher said it had seen a 40% rise year-on-year in e-book sales, which now account for 6% of its total book sales. Wright said EUP plans to invest more in its digital arm in 2012, as well as commission more titles. In March 2012, the business also plans to launch Edinburgh Scholarship Online, an online platform for monograph content, which is part of University Press Scholarship Online, developed by Oxford University Press. Later in the year it will sell e-books through Cambridge University Press’s University Publishing Online.
Wright said: “These results represent another good result for Edinburgh University Press in the face of challenging economic conditions, particularly in our two major markets of the UK and North America—although encouragingly emerging markets like India and China saw significant year on year sales increases.
“As well as our link-up with Oxford we will be looking to forge other new partnerships in order to ensure we continue to have an innovative offering for scholars, teachers, students and academic libraries.”
Wright said the challenges for EUP in the next year continue to be the economic outlook in the UK and US markets, and the instability in the academic library markets.