Bloomsbury gets ebook boost

Strong sales of best-selling cookbooks and a surge in ebooks helped boost the publisher Bloomsbury in the final three months of 2011.

A 38 per cent rise in ebook sales at the publisher backed up data from the online bookseller Amazon, which said Christmas Day was the biggest ever day for book downloads for its Kindle e-reader. The buoyant ebook sales helped Bloomsbury report it would hit City expectations for 2011 results. Its Christmas bestsellers included cookery books River Cottage Veg Everyday! by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, and Heston at Home by Heston Blumenthal.

Bloomsbury's chief executive, Nigel Newton, said: "We have a robust business, strongly adapted to the digital market place, that we have positioned to take full advantage of the continuing opportunities arising from growth of online sales and sales of ebooks. Bloomsbury's strengths are underpinned by an extremely strong author list."