Profile weathers pandemic year with small dip in turnover

Indie publisher Profile ended the financial year with a turnover of £12m, down just 1.5% on 2019, weathering a year that saw bookshops closed throughout multiple lockdowns.

For the year ending 31st March 2021, operating profit came in at £900,012, accounting for 7% of turnover and up on 2019's £485,210 result, which was 4%.

The press attributed the turnover dip in part to the closure of bookshops during the UK lockdowns, though sales of backlist titles by authors including Robert Greene, Julia Cameron, Ryan Holiday and Mary Beard performed well.

The best performing new titles that boosted revenue when shops opened include Serpent’s Tail’s Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters, which was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Viper bestseller and Richard & Judy Book Club pick The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward and Profile’s paperback of A Cheesemonger’s History of the British Isles, a Waterstones Book of the Month and Sunday Times bestseller.

Sales of Janice Hallett’s The Appeal, published by Profile's crime imprint Viper were also solid. Her next novel, The Twyford Code, will be released in January 2022 and a third will follow in 2023. Next spring also sees the release of Ward’s new book, Sundial.

Other highlights across the list for the current financial year include Booth, the much-anticipated new novel by Karen Joy Fowler via Serpent’s Tail, her first book since the Booker-shortlisted We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. Robert Greene will be publishing his new book, The Daily Laws, this October.

Managing director Andrew Franklin said of the results: "2021 is a year of three anniversaries for us: 70 years of Souvenir, 35 years of Serpent’s Tail and 25 years of Profile, and now that bookshops are open, we are reminded—if anyone could ever forget—that nothing works in the book world without bookshops."