Quercus goes for growth

15/05/2007 Robert Tyerman

Quercus Publishing intends to boost turnover from £3.6 million to £50 million by 2012, said chief executive officer Mark Smith.

Chaired by publishing veteran Anthony Cheetham, Quercus, which floated on PLUS last autumn, turned a £131,000 loss into a pre-tax profit of £319,000 last year. The company, whose operations range from contract and trade fiction to paperback fiction, has won the British Book Industry’s Small Publisher of the Year Award this year, but is aiming for fast expansion, said Smith, a former luminary of Australian Broadcasting.

Quercus, one of whose recent books was The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney, published five titles in 2005 and 50 last year, and hopes to publish 130 this year, with 180 the target for 2008. The company has hired some formidable publishing industry names to scout for and sign new authors and is developing in children’s books as well.

Among authors recently signed is Australian crime writer Peter Temple, winner of the Ned Kelly Crime Fiction Award Down Under. Quercus professed high hopes for next year’s launch of Canadian novel After River and Soul Catcher, about a US civil war slave-hunter who falls in love with one of the women he pursues. The company, whose thriller list is adorned with books by ex-MI5 boss Dame Stella Rimington, is brassing up its internal organisation with a new chief operating officer Mike McGrath.

Smith said margins can range from 35 per cent in contract business to 62 per cent in paperback fiction and 80 per cent in ‘contract with trade’ deals and suggests Quercus will be able to fund its expansion from cash flow, especially as its paperback ‘back list’ of published fiction grows. He claimed Quercus and similar publishers are filling a void left by big publishing houses, which stick to big, proven blockbusters and are loathe to spend on nurturing unknown talent.

Floated last October in a £2.8 million fundraising at 45p, Quercus shares, recommended by Growth Company Investor at 53.5p, have now reached 74.5p, Hold on.