Ebook sales pick up at Penguin

The books business, whose UK division published 78 top-ten best-sellers last year, grew overall profits by 5 per cent to £111m in 2011, despite the collapse of two major customers, including Borders in the United States.

Since the beginning of 2008, digital downloads of apps and ebooks across Penguin have totalled approximately 50 million, with revenues from ebooks now accounting for 20 per cent of all sales in the United States.

Kathryn Stockett’s The Help was Penguin’s best-selling title across the US industry, selling five million copies in print and digital in its third year since publication. In the UK, Jamie Oliver’s 30-Minute Meals and Dawn French’s A Tiny Bit of Marvellous were among two of the top five industry titles last year.

Chief executive Marjorie Scardino said: “The external environment provides a testing backdrop for these results.”