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Publisher joins forces with Matthew Freud's literary agency to digitally republish out-of-print classics
Harry Potter publisher Bloomsbury has joined forces with the literary and talent agency owned by PR guru Matthew Freud to set up a new ebook publishing venture, providing digital versions of out-of-print titles by authors ranging from the late political diarist Alan Clark to the novelist Monica Dickens.
From September, 500 out-of-print titles from authors such as Clark, the outspoken Conservative minister, the Labour politician and biographer Roy Jenkins, Booker prizewinner Bernice Rubens and poet and critic Edith Sitwell will be available globally via a new online service to be called Bloomsbury Reader.
Consumers will be able to download the titles as ebooks on to handheld devices such as Amazon's Kindle, or place an order for a copy to be printed and sent to them.
With digital publishing on the rise, the founders hope to "bring back to life" books that are out of print and make money from them.
Other authors whose titles will be on the initial launch list include Monica Dickens, who wrote the Follyfoot children's series, and the prolific short-story writer and essayist VS Pritchett. The Bloomsbury Reader website will be launched in September, in good time for the Christmas market.
Unlike in traditional publishing where the busiest time is the run-up to Christmas, the busiest time for the ebook market is from Christmas Day onwards, when people who have been given Kindles and other e-reader devices as presents begin downloading books.
Bloomsbury Reader is a collaboration between Bloomsbury and the Rights House, the company owned by Freud and talent agent Michael Foster, which last year took over Peters Fraser & Dunlop, one of the oldest literary agencies in the country.
Open platform
However, Bloomsbury's digital media director, Stephanie Duncan, and the Rights House's joint chief executives, Foster and Caroline Michel, want the new online service to be open to other literary agencies. They believe it could be a useful tool for other companies to make money from dormant literary assets by bringing the content back to the market in a cost-effective way.
Duncan, who is also Bloomsbury Reader's publisher, said: "What we're discovering with the rise in digital is that people want to rediscover authors that are out of print. Or they read a book and then want to read everything by that author.
"The fact is, digital gives you a way to bring books back to life … which, for whatever reason, are out of print. We'll be bringing everything to the process, down to the jacket cover and sales and distribution."
Duncan pointed out that only books where the rights have reverted back to the author will be used. "It is not our intention to conflict with what publishers are already doing," she said.
Bloomsbury Reader titles will also be available through a number of online retailers. Pricing has yet to be revealed, but will be what Duncan described as "affordable". She added: "We see a great opportunity in ensuring the books get the widest possible distribution."
She declined to reveal the "business arrangements" between Bloomsbury and the Rights House but said the venture was a "joint idea". The Rights House looks after the estates of a number of deceased authors, including Clark and Sitwell.
Bloomsbury Reader's backers are looking to tap into a fast-growing market: digital publishing is growing at an impressive rate. The increasing popularity of Kindles and ebook titles by authors such as Stephen Fry helped boost UK sales of digital book products by 20% to £180m last year, according to the Publishers Association.
Rising revenues
In its full-year 2010 figures, book publisher Penguin, which released new work from chef Jamie Oliver, singer Barbra Streisand, thriller writer Tom Clancy and comedian Michael McIntyre in the run-up to Christmas, said that ebook revenues rose 182% to account for 6% – about £63m – of the global total.
Amazon refuses to reveal how many Kindle devices it has sold. However, it recently admitted that customers are choosing Kindle digital versions of titles over traditional book formats at a rate of more than two to one, even as hardcover sales continue to grow.
Since the beginning of April, for every 100 hardcover books amazon.co.uk is selling, it is shifting 242 Kindle book downloads.