Alma Books Company Profile

Alma Books was set up in October 2005 by Alessandro Gallenzi and Elisabetta Minervini, the founders of Hesperus Press. Following its takeover of the Oneworld Classics list in February 2012, it now publishes around seventy new titles a year, mainly in the field of contemporary literary fiction and classics. Alma takes around forty per cent of its titles from English-language originals, while the rest are translations from French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Japanese and other languages. Alma also publishes around five non-fiction titles each year. Alma Books includes the following imprints: Alma Books, Alma Classics, Overture (music imprint), Calder Publications (founded 1949) and Herla (Poetry). The backlist comprises over 300 titles. Alma counts half a dozen Nobel-Prize winners in its list and many more British and international award-winning authors and translators.

As well as publishing internationally renowned authors, Alma takes pride in discovering and fostering new talents that go on to win prizes and become established writers across the world.

WHAT MAKES US DIFFERENT

Alma – which is Spanish for “soul” – is a publisher that regards a book as an aesthetic artefact rather than as a mass-produced commodity. The company’s whole emphasis lies on quality over quantity, all the way from choosing projects for publication to creating the physical look and feel of each volume. Alma works intimately with authors and translators to develop the best possible finished scripts, and displays a passionate commitment to the kind of professional editing, copy-editing and proofreading that is dying out elsewhere.