Bloomsbury Publishing Buys the US Publisher for £65 Million

Bloomsbury Publishing acquires Rowman & Littlefield's academic division for $83M (£65M), expanding its North American and digital academic publishing presence.

on May 30, 2024

Bloomsbury Publishing Buys the US Publisher for £65 Million | Frontlist

Bloomsbury Publishing announced on Wednesday that it had acquired The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group's academic publishing division for $83 million (£65 million).

The Harry Potter publisher stated that this is its largest acquisition to date and "significantly" accelerates and improves its academic publishing in North America and Bloomsbury Digital Resources (BDR).
Rowman & Littlefield, a privately held company, was founded in the United States in 1949 and publishes over 40,000 academic titles. The agreement excludes Rowman & Littlefield's Globe Pequot lists (with the exception of the Applause and Backbeat imprints), its trade publishing arm, Sundance-Newbridge, its K-8 education company, and National Book Network (NBN).

Bloomsbury chief executive Nigel Newton stated, "This acquisition is a game changer for Bloomsbury." Rowman & Littlefield is one of the only independent US academic publishers of this size, and it is fantastic that our conversations with Jed Lyons resulted in this acquisition.

Adding their 40,000 academic titles to ours will make us a significant US academic publisher, expanding Bloomsbury's academic and digital publishing presence in North America, opening up new markets and publishing areas for Bloomsbury, and marking a key milestone in the delivery of our long-term growth strategy.

"Following the exceptional performance in our consumer division in our recently announced preliminary results, the acquisition accelerates our non-consumer division, underlining our portfolio of portfolios strategy."