Big books

Led by soaring sales in its consumer group, total revenue at Bloomsbury Publishing jumped 30% in the fiscal year ended February 29, 2024, while profits increased 57%, the U.K.-based company reported. Sales were £343 million (about $436 million at current exchanges rates), and earnings hit £49 million-both records for the publisher

In April, Richard North Patterson-author of 16 New York Times bestsellers-published an essay in the Wall Street Journal about his difficulties finding a publisher for his first novel in nine years.  Read more

Fifteen years ago, the once powerful book publisher Judith Regan, ruler of her own imprint at Rupert Murdoch's Harper­Collins, embarked on a project of dubious distinction. Somehow she convinced O.J. Simpson to get on board with a mea culpa manqué about the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. It would be called If I Did It, and it had the makings of a blockbuster.  Read more

The estate of Watership Down author Richard Adams has won back all of the rights to the late author's classic novel about anthropomorphised rabbits, in a high court ruling against the director of the famed animated adaptation.  Read more

John le Carré has been named the latest recipient of the $100,000 (£76,000) Olof Palme prize, an award given for an "outstanding achievement" in the spirit of the assassinated Swedish prime minister.