Sort of Books is an independent publishing venture by Mark Ellingham and Natania Jansz. Our list includes acclaimed authors such as Shehan Karunatilaka, whose The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida won the 2022 Booker Prize, the Folio Prize winner Michelle de Kretser, whose novel Theory & Practice is our lead title in 2025, and Chris Stewart, whose Driving Over Lemons series has sold more than two million copies. We publish novels by Tove Jansson, Lore Segal, Jonathan Buckley and Tom Bullough, the nature essays of Kathleen Jamie, and all the original Moomin books.
We set up Sort Of in 1999 mainly to help our friend Chris Stewart launch his debut book, Driving Over Lemons, which became a surprise UK bestseller. Fired by its success, we have hand-picked three or four titles each year since. These have included four further Chris Stewart titles, nine remarkable works of fiction that Moomins creator Tove Jansson wrote for adults, most notably The Summer Book, which has now sold nearly 200,000 copies. We also publish beautiful hardback editions of the original Moomin novels, restored to their original 1950s and 1960s designs.
prizes
Our books have won numerous prizes. As well as Shehan's Booker Prize, Kathleen Jamie's Sightlines was awarded both the prestigious John Burroughs Medal and the Orion Award, and Robert Kunzig's Mapping the Deep, telling the extraordinary story of oceanography, won the Aventis Science Book of the Year award.
Finally, we are delighted to keep in print Peter Blegvad's unique Leviathan – a genre-defying comic strip collection of wordplay, puns and ideas. We love this book and owe Peter a debt, having called our company Sort Of after the first record he made with his band, Slapp Happy.
the team
Editors: Natania Jansz & Mark Ellingham
Cover Design: Peter Dyer
Text Design: Henry Iles
Publicist: Ruth Killick
In short, we publish the sort of books we feel proud of.
distribution & rights
Sort Of Books are represented by Profile Books and the Independent Alliance/Faber.
PR is handled by Ruth Killick Publicity.
Foreign rights are handled by Andrew Nurnberg Associates.
American rights by George Lucas at Inkwell Management.
product safety
Our books, ebooks and audiobooks comply with General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR), December 2024, and we monitor our suppliers to ensure they conform to the relevant industry standards required. For further information contact us via contact@sortof.store.
EU Authorised Representative: EAS Project OU, Mustamäe tee 50, 10621, Tallinn, Estonia, gpsr.requests@easproject.com