Profile Books

About Profile Books

Profile Books is an independent London publisher founded on 1 April 1996 by Andrew Franklin and Stephen Brough, originally to publish non-fiction, and best known for Lynne Truss's punctuation bestseller Eats, Shoots & Leaves (2003).

Growth. Profile began with a staff of three and now employs around sixty, publishing roughly 100 new titles a year from Cloth Fair in the City of London. Eats, Shoots & Leaves was named Book of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2004, and the New Scientist "Last Word" collections were another early success. Profile's list has also included the UK edition of Robert Greene's The 48 Laws of Power (2000) and Daron Acemoğlu and James A. Robinson's Why Nations Fail, which won the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year award in 2012.

Acquisitions and imprints. Profile bought the HarperCollins UK business list in 2002, took on Serpent's Tail (founded by Pete Ayrton in 1986) in 2007 and Birmingham's Tindal Street Press in 2012, absorbed Third Millennium Publishing (now Profile Editions) in 2015, and took over Souvenir Press in 2018 after the death of its founder Ernest Hecht. It launched the crime imprint Viper in 2019, has published a science and medicine list with Wellcome Collection since 2012, and issues Economist Books in association with The Economist.

Today. Profile remains independent and has been named Independent Publisher of the Year at the British Book Awards four times, by its own count. Andrew Franklin retired in 2026, the year the firm marked its thirtieth anniversary.