Bloomsbury Publishing plc is a British worldwide publishing house of fiction and non-fiction. Bloomsbury's head office is located on Bedford Square[3] in Bloomsbury, an area of the London Borough of Camden. It has a US publishing office located in New York City, an India publishing office in New Delhi, an Australian sales office in Sydney CBD, and other publishing offices in the UK, including in Oxford. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.[4]
History
The company was founded in 1986 by Nigel Newton, who had previously been employed by other publishing companies. It was floated as a public registered company in 1994, raising £5.5 million, which was used to fund expansion of the company into paperback and children's books. A rights issue of shares in 1998 further raised £6.1 million, which was used to expand the company, in particular to found a U.S. branch. In 1998, Bloomsbury USA was established. Bloomsbury USA Books for Young Readers was established in 2002, and in 2005, Bloomsbury acquired Walker & Co, a small company dedicated to publishing nonfiction.[5] The Walker brand was discontinued in 2015 and sold to Walker Publishing Company.[6][7]
Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Journals (BQFJ), an open access and peer reviewed academic publisher, was created in December 2010 as a joint venture with Qatar Foundation. Journal research articles were published through BQFJ's website QScience.com.[10] The company's partnership with Qatar Foundation ended in December 2015 and all of Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing works were incorporated in Qatari-owned HBKU Press. At the time of BQFP's dissolution it had published over 200 books. BQFJ's works were also incorporated in HBKU Press.[11]
In 2012, Bloomsbury established a publishing office in India.[12] In May 2023, an article in The Verge reported that the cover of the UK edition of House of Earth and Blood, published by Bloomsbury, uses an AI-generated image.[13]
In 2018, it was confirmed that much of the company's growth over the previous two decades was attributable to the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling.[14]
Acquisitions and imprints
Among the companies, book lists and imprints that Bloomsbury has acquired are:[15]
^Harding, Sue-Ann (2014). "'But we don't read, Professor!' Translation, Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing, and building a 'vibrant literary culture'". Perspectives: Studies in Translatology. 22 (4): Abstract. doi:10.1080/0907676X.2014.948891. S2CID60553880.
