Joffe Books celebrates 10th anniversary with garden party

Joffe Books celebrated its 10th anniversary with a garden party with over 100 guests following a year of major expansion. The indie press is now looking to extend its international reach across America, France and Germany as well as boosting its publication of fantasy titles. 

The 10th anniversary reception at Six Park Place on Thursday evening (23rd May) hosted attendees such as authors Helen Lederer and Alison Joseph, literary journalist Jake Kerridge and Watson & Little literary agent James Willis. 

After Jasper Joffe started it as a solo venture in 2014 to publish his mother’s rejected Mills & Books novel, it now has a headcount of 20 based in east London. Avon’s Emma Grundy and Bonnier’s Emilie Marneur have been newly recruited to senior rules while  longtime staffers such as Nina Taylor – who started as a publishing assistant five years ago – is now operations director. The company has also been boosted with the acquisition of fellow indies Lume Books and Choc Lit in 2023, winning the Trade Publisher at the Independent Publishing Awards in the same year. 

Joffe told The Bookseller: “It feels a transitional moment. I can barely believe it. We’ve gone from about five full-time staff to about 20. We’ve hardly stopped hiring. And we have plans to recruit more over the next six months.” 

He said of the expansion: “We bought Choc Lit and Lume Books last year and so have about 6,000 books and we need more people to repackage and republishing previously published books. We’ve increased sales at Choc Lit 10 times and at Lume we’ve more than doubled the sales in a year, which is pleasing but it’s been pretty break-neck speed.” 

Joffe also wants to extend its international reach: “One bit we’re expanding is publishing books in German and French so I think there’s an opportunity to have a digital first publisher that’s also a global publisher in lots of languages. 

“We’re trying to expand our US reach and do more psychological thrillers which do really well there and we want to have the same market share as we do here. They also work in America.” 

It is also extending its genres. “We accept open submissions all the time and we’ve now opened up open submissions for fantasy – when we acquired publishers we got lists in these and we say to our editors they should acquire what they’re passionate about,” Joffe said. On average the company publishes 260 titles a year though “I think that will go up” with about 10 in-house editors working on books. 

However he emphasised the need for a work-life-balance. “We’re unusual because our core working hours are 10am to 4.30pm because when I started the company I wanted to take her [Joffe’s daughter] to school and pick her up, and we keep to those. I don’t think that working longer hours leads to better decisions.”