Bloomsbury, the publisher that struck gold by signing up JK Rowling when no other house would touch her books about the boy wizard Harry Potter, is turning to its international businesses to help plug the gap left by the release of his last adventure.
Just before Christmas the German translation of Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner secured the top spot in Germany's bestseller list and Bloomsbury is hoping that its success heralds more hefty returns from its fast-growing subsidiary in the country. Bloomsbury, which is battling to convince a sceptical City that it can fill the post-Harry void, has already seen German revenues jump by more than a third in the first half of the year and, following a strong autumn, is confident of a stellar full year.
The publisher entered the buoyant German book market in 2003 with the acquisition of Berlin Verlag. It has used the subsidiary to launch translations of books spotted in its UK and North American business - such as The Kite Runner and William Boyd's Restless - as well as to distribute English-language books. The original English-language version of the final Harry Potter book this summer had huge success, selling more than a million copies to the Germans.
Bloomsbury's chairman, Nigel Newton, says the publisher has had a "storming autumn" and "one of the real highlights for us has been the performance in Germany". He puts much of the success down to a weekly conference call between New York, London and Berlin, where editors discuss books they have spotted in a particular market.
"There are books we identified in London and then snapped up the rights before they were offered on German markets. That's what differentiates us," says Newton. "This is one of the benefits of working as one unit. There are many aspects in which medium-sized is beautiful in publishing."
Newton, who founded Bloomsbury 21 years ago, has been at pains to assure the financial community that his business can maintain growth despite the hugely successful Harry Potter series coming to an end with The Deathly Hallows. Shares in the publisher have almost halved over the course of this year as the seven-book run came to an end.
Bloomsbury, which, in Britain, competes with German-owned publishing houses such as Macmillan and Random House, says operations in Berlin and New York are part of a strategy to spread the risk inherent in bidding for new titles by having the ability to sell books in more than one market.
"The difficult part of publishing is finding the big books that will really work and once we do find them we are doing a good job of getting them into three markets," he says.
He cites The Kite Runner as an example. The German rights were bought by Bloomsbury Berlin after editors there heard about the book from Bloomsbury UK. Christmas week was its third at number one in the German paperback bestseller list, having sold more than 678,000 copies since paperback publication in November 2004. Hosseini's second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, is also high up in the German hardback charts.
Revenues from Germany are still a fraction of the sales Bloomsbury enjoys in Britain and also smaller than its other market, North America. But growth is rapid. In Bloomsbury's first half, revenues at Berlin Verlag were up by 36% to £3.42m.
Kathy Rooney, Berlin Verlag's head, says the main attractions of the German market are a strong independent bookseller market, a typically longer hardback phase for titles and retail price maintenance. In other words, German law prevents the kind of price cuts that mean UK bestsellers such as Harry Potter make little money for retailers.
One of the next goals for the German division is to find an exportable title in its own territory. Although that is a much tougher challenge than translating English books for the German market, says Rooney.
"Germany as a market is much more open to books in translation than the UK or US. We are still looking for that magic title from Germany," she says.
