01 April 2026
On 1 April 2026 Profile celebrated its 30th birthday as one of the UK’s leading independent publishers. The founder and owner of the company, Andrew Franklin, retired the day before to a non-executive chair role. He was also awarded the London Book Fair Lifetime Achievement Award for 2026.
Profile’s anniversary year sees new books from some of its biggest names: Mary Beard’s Talking Classics kicks off the celebrations in April, following Alan Bennett’s new diaries in March, Enough Said. Other highlights include a new book by the Nobel prize-winning author Daron Acemoglu, What Happened to Liberal Democracy in August; Francis Fukuyama’s political memoir In the Realm of the Last Man in September; Robert Greene’s magnum opus The Law of the Sublime (November); and Rashid Khalidi’s accessible history, Palestine.
Janice Hallett makes a much-anticipated return to Lockwood in The Silent Appeal for Viper in September; Serpent’s Tail has Waterstones and indie bookseller favourite Christian Kracht’s new novel Air in July, and the paperback of Waterstones debut fiction prize shortlisted Saraswati by Gurnaik Johal (who was recently shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award) is out in March. Souvenir will publish international bestseller One Day a Cat Came to Me in October, life-affirming meditations blending philosophy, mindfulness and connection with nature by Korean monk Bokyeong Sunim.
Rebecca Gray, chief executive, said: ‘Though we will miss Andrew terribly, we count ourselves lucky that he will take on a new role as non-executive Chair. Profile is built on the strong foundations Andrew laid, so he leaves us in excellent shape, profitable even in this tough year, as we have been every year for the last twenty-nine years, and with a stellar year of publishing to come. The world is a strange place now and the book industry faces exceptional challenges, but all of us at Profile look forward to the next thirty years of outstanding independent publishing.’
Franklin founded Profile on April Fool’s Day in 1996 to publish stimulating non-fiction. Early bestsellers include Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss (more than 3 million copies sold worldwide) and the New Scientist ‘Last Word’ series, which sold over 2.5 million copies.
Over the decades the publisher expanded, beginning with acquiring the business list from Harper Collins, and then in 2007 acquiring Serpent’s Tail. Founded by Pete Ayrton in 1986, this year Serpent’s Tail celebrates 40 years of publishing authors including Karen Joy Fowler, Carmen Maria Machado, Ruby Tandoh and Torrey Peters. Tuskar Rock, headed by Peter Straus and Colm Toibin, publishes László Krasznahorkai, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2025 (his acceptance speech titled Enough about Angels will be published in April).
In 2018, after the death of founder Ernest Hecht, Profile acquired the publishing of Souvenir Press, which turns 75 years this year and is now home to multi-million selling Julia Cameron, the mega hit MURDLE puzzle series and economist Emily Oster among others. Profile launched Nibbie-winning Viper six years ago, home to Janice Hallett, Attica Locke and Garry Disher. Over the decades Profile has partnered with the Economist, London Review of Books and the Wellcome Collection, as well as the New Scientist and many other organisations.
Profile has won Independent Publisher of the Year at the British Book Awards four times, and most recently was awarded overall Book of the Year in 2024 for Souvenir’s Murdle, which was Profile’s third Christmas Number One title.
Andrew Franklin said: ‘When I started Profile in 1996 there were three of us. Now there are nearly seventy. We will remain fiercely independent, but we are not a small publisher any longer, we are a medium-sized one. Rebecca Gray is exactly the right person to lead Profile and its authors to new successes. She is thoughtful, clever and principled. So I am very happy to be stepping back – which is never an easy thing to do – knowing that the company is in the best of hands with high morale and an outstanding list of books. I shall take great pleasure in watching (and helping a bit) from the sidelines.’