By Brian Wheeler BBC News Online business reporter

Pottermania shows little sign of waning

The Man with the Dancing Eyes, supermodel Sophie Dahl's first foray into fiction, went straight into the Sunday Times bestseller list, its latest trading statement boasts.

The Summit of Everest, with original documents and pictures from the Royal Geographical Society, is also doing good business, apparently.

Then, of course, there is the children's list and the new Harry Potter.

Record sales

JK Rowling's latest blockbuster seems to have been deliberately played down, in Thursday's statement.

It is mentioned almost in passing, between Margaret Atwood's latest effort and the upcoming US launch of Ben Schott's Original Miscellany.

It's only when you take a second look - at the figures - that the scale of its success hits home.

According to Nielsen BookScan, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix sold 1,777,541 copies in the UK. On its first day.

Bloomsbury calls such sales "considerable".

In fact, it makes the latest Potter opus the most successful first run book in publishing history, by some margin.

But Bloomsbury's reticence is understandable. It is desperate not to be seen as a one-trick pony.

Literary credibility

There are very few parallels, in publishing, for what the Soho-based firm has achieved.

Invariably, small publishers either go to the wall or, if successful, are swallowed by larger publishers.

But even without Harry Potter, Bloomsbury appears to have bucked the trend, combining commercial success with literary credibility - and hanging on to its independence.

The Potter series accounts for about 50% of the group's profits, which came it at a healthy �11m last year, on turnover of �68m.

But it is not the whole story.

Picking winners

Two of Bloomsbury's other titles, Donna Tartt's The Secret History and Schott's Original Miscellany have topped the UK fiction and non-fiction bestseller lists respectively.

If they didn't have Harry Potter they would still probably be regarded as a highly successful publishing group Richard Hitchcock, publishing analyst

Book trade analyst Richard Hitchcock said: "If they didn't have Harry Potter they would still probably be regarded as a highly successful publishing group.

"They are unique in terms of their size, but a lot of it comes down to the people there, who seem to have an amazing nose for picking out talented authors.

"It would be easy to say they got lucky with JK Rowling, but they have got lucky more than once."

No bidding war

Like the Potter series, Schott's Miscellany, a scattergun collection of exotic trivia, combines clever marketing with a shrewd eye for popular, middle-brow taste.

And, like Rowling, Schott has benefited from the personal approach that the Bloomsbury editorial team brings to its work.

Neither author had been published before.

In Rowling's case, Bloomsbury founder Nigel Newton simply decided to take a �2,500 punt on an unknown author, based on a sample chapter.

There was no million pound advance or bidding war.

This is how publishing is meant to work, but very rarely does.

Recent acquisitions

And all the signs are that Bloomsbury is spending the Potter millions wisely.

It has bought Whitaker's Almanac, and snobs' bible Who's Who, and in March it acquired Berlin Verlag, one of Germany's leading literary publishers.

Another recent acquisition was Andrew Brodie Publications, an educational publisher of photocopiable books for schools.

"These are the sort of areas you would want to diversify into," Richard Hitchcock says.

"It reduces the risk of trying to find a one-hit wonder every year."

In other words, it would have been easy to mimic the record industry and throw millions at raw talent in search of the next JK Rowling.

But it would have been unlikely to work.

Imminent takeover?

Bloomsbury continues to invest strongly in new writers but even Newton - whose maxim is "never try too hard to improve your failure rate" - knows you can't pick a winner every time.

The only question now is how long Bloomsbury can hang on to its independence.

There are no rumours of an imminent takeover.

But with four or five years of growth left in the Potter series - and a lucrative backlist to keep the cash rolling in - it must look like a tempting prospect.

But you can't help feeling that if Bloomsbury were to be swallowed up by a Pearson or HarperCollins, publishing would be losing more than just another name on a book spine.