16th January 2012

Interim Management Statement

Bloomsbury Publishing is issuing its Interim Management Statement in respect of the period 1 September 2011 to date.

Group performance in the period ended 31 December 2011 was strong. Throughout the period we have had success across a very wide range of titles, in digital and in print, front and back list, trade and specialist, adult and children's. Our major bestsellers included River Cottage Veg Everyday! by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, which has been consistently in the top five on Amazon.co.uk for the past six weeks; Heston at Home by Heston Blumenthal; Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman and the Harry Potter box sets.

Ebook sales grew significantly with the quarter ended 31 December 2011 being up 38% year on year. YouGov reported that over 1.3 million ebook readers were sold in the UK over the Christmas period and Amazon.com has said Christmas Day was the "biggest ever day for Kindle book downloads".

Our books continue to win critical praise and recognition with prize winners in the period including The Wavewatcher's Companion by Gavin Pretor-Pinney, which won the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books and Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward, which won the 2011 National Book Award in the US. Four of our children's titles have been nominated for the 2012 Carnegie Medal and Among The Fans: From Ashes to the Arrows, a Year of Watching the Watchers by Patrick Collins was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award.

We generated significant revenues from intellectual property and publishing services projects. In October we announced a long term licensing deal for the Wisden brand in India with contracted revenues for our Adult division of US$3.2 million over five years plus a royalty share. We have also recently launched the new online magazine Wisden Extra. In December, Bloomsbury Information entered into a partnership with Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH, a private independent non