Headline is a London publisher founded in 1986 by Tim Hely Hutchinson; it bought Hodder & Stoughton in 1993 and is now a publishing brand within Hachette UK.
Headline is a British trade publisher founded in London in 1986 by Tim Hely Hutchinson, which grew within seven years into the group that bought Hodder & Stoughton and is now part of Hachette UK.
Hely Hutchinson raised venture capital to start the firm, which floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1991 and was named publisher of the year in 1992. In 1993 Headline bought the much older house of Hodder & Stoughton, and the merged company, Hodder Headline, became the fourth-largest publisher in Britain.
WH Smith bought Hodder Headline in 1999. In 2004 the retailer agreed to sell it to Hachette Livre, part of the French Lagardère group, for roughly $400 million, and Hely Hutchinson went on to run Hachette's British book business. Headline survives as a publishing brand of Hachette UK, operating as Headline Publishing Group with imprints including Headline Review, Tinder Press and Wildfire.
Headline is chiefly a publisher of commercial fiction and popular non-fiction. It has issued British hardback editions of Dean Koontz (for example Demon Seed, 1997), and its current list includes Simon Scarrow, Anne Perry and Harlan Coben.
Holding a copy? The first edition checker shows Headline's practice for the year on your title page.
A first impression of a Headline hardback is identified by the number line on the copyright page: the first printing keeps the 1 in the line.
How to read it
A first impression of a Headline hardback is identified by the number line on the copyright page: the first printing keeps the 1 in the line. How to read it - Dealers describing Headline first impressions consistently cite a complete number line (for example 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1) or a line that still contains 1. If the lowest number is 2 or higher, the copy is a later impression.
We track 23 editions published by Headline, 8 of them first editions, across 23 books.
Every fact on this page was checked against the sources listed. Checked 20 October 2026. Reviewed by Harriet Ellis; read how we check facts.
