Profile Books is a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 independent publishing firm founded in 1996 to publish stimulating non-fiction

Non-fiction

Non-fiction is the form of any narrative, account, or other communicative work whose assertions and descriptions are understood to be fact...

. It publishes across a wide range of subjects including history

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

, biography

Biography

A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...

, memoir

Memoir

A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...

, politics

Politics

Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...

, current affairs, travel

Travel

Travel is the movement of people or objects between relatively distant geographical locations. 'Travel' can also include relatively short stays between successive movements.-Etymology:...

 and popular science

Popular science

Popular science, sometimes called literature of science, is interpretation of science intended for a general audience. While science journalism focuses on recent scientific developments, popular science is broad-ranging, often written by scientists as well as journalists, and is presented in many...

. It also publishes all The Economist

The Economist

The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...

 Books.

In 2003 it published its first million copy seller, Eats, Shoots & Leaves

Eats, Shoots & Leaves

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation is a non-fiction book written by Lynne Truss, the former host of the BBC Radio 4's Cutting a Dash programme. In the book, published in 2003, Truss bemoans the state of punctuation in the United Kingdom and the United States and...

by Lynne Truss

Lynne Truss

Lynne Truss is an English writer and journalist, best known for her popular book Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.-Early life:...

. This book was the number one bestselling non-fiction

Non-fiction

Non-fiction is the form of any narrative, account, or other communicative work whose assertions and descriptions are understood to be fact...

 title for 30 weeks and the Book of the Year at the British Book Awards

British Book Awards

The Galaxy National Book Awards are a series of British literary awards focused on the best UK writers and their works, as selected by an academy of members from the British book publishing industry...

 2004. Profile Books was awarded the Small Publisher of the Year award at the same event.

In 2006 Profile Books was again the recipient of the Small Publisher of the Year award, its third win since it was formed. It had previously won the Sunday Times award three years into its existence.

In January 2007 Profile Books acquired Serpent’s Tail, bringing together two of the most distinctive, highly regarded and fiercely independent small publishers in London.

Other bestsellers include Does Anything Eat Wasps? and Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze? in association with New Scientist

New Scientist

New Scientist is a weekly non-peer-reviewed English-language international science magazine, which since 1996 has also run a website, covering recent developments in science and technology for a general audience. Founded in 1956, it is published by Reed Business Information Ltd, a subsidiary of...

magazine.

Profile Books is distributed in the UK by Random House

Random House

Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...

, who are part of the largest publisher in the world, and currently sold by Faber & Faber.