News Corp’s book publishing business revenues reached $233 million during the company’s fiscal 2015, representing a 16 percent jump compared to the prior year.
The change was largely driven by the inclusion of Harlequin results, “and strong backlist sales in the general books category, resulting from the success of American Sniper by Chris Kyle, partially offset by lower revenues from the Divergent series by Veronica Roth,” the company’s report explained. Digital sales, which include both e-books and digital audio books, represented 22 percent of the company’s consumer revenues for fiscal 2015.
During the fourth quarter of 2015, News Corp’s book business earned $29 million in revenues, representing an 8 percent increase over the same period last year.
Book sales helped News Corp’s overall corporate earnings reach $8.63 billion for the full year of fiscal 2015, a one percent increase as compared to last year’s revenues of $8.57 billion.