Virgin Books was created in 1979 as a rock music publisher, linked to Virgin Records. In 1991 it merged with W H Allen thereby creating a business famous for its highly commercial bestsellers.

Virgin Books now employs approximately 35 staff plus dozens of freelancers, producing over 200 new books a year and an expanding backlist of 500+ titles. In 2007, Random House acquired a majority share of the company in April 2007 and now operates Virgin Books group functions.

Virgin Books is well known for its expertise in health & lifestyle, biography, music, sport, film, business and reference. It also owns three very successful erotic fiction imprints, Black Lace, Nexus and Cheek.

Bestsellers from Virgin Books include Richard Branson’s Screw It, Let’s Do It, You Are What You Eat and Catch Me Before I Fall.

We have an expanding health list, led by the huge successes including Carol Vorderman’s Detox series and Rick Gallop’s Gi Diet series, which have both sold over 1 million copies.

Sir Richard Branson’s autobiography Losing My Virginity has been an international bestseller since publication with over 2 million copies sold and in March 2006 Virgin published his life lessons, Screw It, Let’s Do It. Both are required reading for all staff!

We have a strong track record of working with media partners such as Emap (Empire Film Guide), Celador (You Are What You Eat) and LucasFilm (Star Wars Chronicles).

Preface Publishing, Trevor Dolby and Rosie de Courcy’s new, independent imprint backed by Random House, is building a diverse list of commercial fiction and non-fiction titles for launch in March 2008.

Preface will start its publishing programme with A Point of View by Lisa Jardine and the The Cleaner, the debut novel from US thriller writer Brett Battles who has been credited with reinventing the spy thriller genre.
 
Other titles to follow later in the year include Rick Wakeman’s Grumpy Old Men and a collection drawn from Prospect magazine’s popular In Fact column.