Profile reports 4% turnover dip but steady profit in 'solid' year

Profile Books has reported a “solid” financial year 2018 to 2019 with turnover at £11.4m, a 4% dip on the previous year, while operating profit was “steady” at £983,375.

The results represented a slight drop on last year, when turnover stood at at £11.9m and operating profit at £1.09m

The indie said its new results were buoyed by the performance of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff (Profile) and Esi Edugyan’s Booker-shortlisted Washington Black (Serpent’s Tail). Robert Greene’s The Laws of Human Nature also sold well, particularly in export and audio, the firm said.

Profile also acquired the audio rights to Atul Gawande’s backlist which it said had been “consistent solid sellers” for the audiobook imprint it established in 2018 with Little, Brown.

And the firm said there was a promising autumn ahead with the paperback edition of Sarah Perry’s novel Melmoth for Serpent’s Tail, Chris McDougall’s Running with Sherman for Profile, and Joanna Cannon’s memoir of her time as a junior doctor, Breaking and Mending, for the Profile Wellcome imprint.

The past year also saw it acquire Souvenir Press to widen its backlist, and has already published one newly acquired title for the imprint, Cribsheet by Emily Oster. In April 2020 it will publish a redesigned paperback edition of Souvenir’s The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, as well as new titles on the list.

Profile has also boosted its editorial team with the arrival of Helen Conford, formerly publishing director at Penguin Press, who took over from Andrew Franklin as Publisher.

M.d. Franklin said: “Publishing is never easy, it never has been, and it has never been more competitive. So we are all chuffed by these results and the consistency of our performance. But what really matters is not the numbers but the books we publish and we are inordinately proud of them.”