It’s hard to picture a more nightmarish vision of our AI future than this AI The optimistic case for AI is clear: incredible scientific breakthroughs, life-enhancing productivity gains and universal access to knowledge. What’s not to like? But items on the other side of the ledger weigh a little heavier: the erosion of jobs, the flattening of knowledge, unstoppable cyber attacks and social rupture. Elon Musk still thinks there’s a [...]
90 years of Penguin Books: The origin myth that may not be true Life&Style The penguin, the myth, the legend. As the publisher celebrates 90 years, Anna Moloney takes a look at the company that revolutionised reading (sort of).
The man on a mission to save the internet Media Search engines and publishers used to operate on a simple deal: publishers would let the likes of Google trawl their site, and in return Google would give them traffic. With the advent of AI, that deal is all but dead, leaving the internet’s old model under existential threat. Ali Lyon meets Matthew Prince, the man [...]
Heseltine-founded media giant snaps up trio of marketing titles September 25, 2025 A magazine group founded by Michael Hesteltine has snapped up a trio of marketing titles from Aim-listed Centaur Media, bolstering its portfolio of advertising and communications outlets. Haymarket, which owns over 70 specialist magazines including the likes of Autocar, Campaign and Management Today, revealed it had acquired Marketing Week, Creative Review and Festival of Marketing [...]
Booktok boosts Bloomsbury again as Sarah J Mass tops bestseller lists July 16, 2025 Bloomsbury has been buoyed by the success of its fantasy-romance list as online discourse fuels mass interest in the books. Sarah J Maas topped bestseller lists again this year with the paperback launch of House of Flame and Shadow in June, following global success with the previous two books in the series. She has now sold [...]
Bloomsbury: Fiction sales boost Harry Potter publisher March 20, 2025 Harry Potter publisher Bloomsbury said its sales last year were ahead of market expectations and driven by success in its consumer division. Analysts had expected the firm to report a revenue drop of two per cent to £333.4m, as well as a twenty per cent drop in profit before tax of £39.6m in the year ending February [...]
Future: Investment plan looks set to pay off at publisher December 5, 2024 The Growth Acceleration Strategy is a two-year investment programme worth £25-30m, which was launched in December 2023.
Condé Nast: Profit slashed at Vogue and GQ owner November 28, 2024 Profit at the UK arm of Condé Nast, the publishing giant behind the likes of Vogue and GQ, has been slashed as it battles a rise in costs. The company, whose publications also include Vanity Fair, Architectural Digest, Wired and Condé Nast Traveller, has reported a pre-tax profit of £8.3m for 2023, according to newly-filed [...]
Pearson: Educational publisher starts to reap rewards of AI October 29, 2024 Pearson said it is starting to see “commercial benefit” from the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into its services. The education publisher said there have been over five million student interactions with its higher education AI study tools in the nine months to September, leading to double-digit year on year billings growth in its higher [...]
Harry Potter keeps flying off shelves as Bloomsbury breaks records October 24, 2024 Sarah J. Maas and the still-popular JK Rowling Harry Potter books are set to help publisher Bloomsbury beat expectations, it was announced this morning. In its results for the six months to 31 August, the publishing house told markets consumer revenue was up 47 per cent to £131.3m for the half year, up from £89.4m, [...]