About Pellerin Books

pellerin (noun): poetic, rare. A wanderer, pilgrim or traveller.

At Pellerin Books, everything starts with a love of stories.

We believe in the power of a good book – the kind that pulls you into another world, introduces you to characters who feel real, and stays with you long after you’ve finished reading. Books can comfort, challenge, distract, and delight. They can change how you see things, or simply make a long day better. That matters to us. As readers, we love the feeling of discovering a new author, and as publishers, we know there is nothing more crucial than getting the right book into the right hands.

Pellerin Books was founded by Laura Palmer and Jessie Sullivan after many years working in publishing, both separately and together. During that time, they worked with brilliant writers and passionate colleagues, championed hundreds of authors and helped millions of people discover their next favourite read. 

They also noticed a pattern that never quite sat right. In an industry under pressure to cut budgets while publishing more and more books, wonderful stories too often struggled to find their readers – and readers, in turn, missed out on the books they would have loved most.

Publishing can be a joyful, creative and rewarding industry. It can also be slow to change. Many book campaigns are still designed for traditional routes to visibility, rather than to speak directly to the readers they hope to reach. When Jessie and Laura worked together, they focused on testing different ways to publish and market books that aligned more closely with how they are actually discovered, bought and read today. The results spoke for themselves.

Eventually, one idea became impossible to ignore: if they wanted to publish in a way that truly served authors and readers – thoughtfully, fairly and for the long term – they would need to build something new.

That’s what Pellerin Books is – a publishing house that began not with a trend forecast or a rush to disrupt, but with care: for stories, for the people who write them, and for the readers searching for their next favourite book.

Pellerin is an old word meaning a traveller or a pilgrim – someone on a journey.

We chose the name deliberately. Publishing is rarely a straight path, whether you’re a reader discovering a new author, a writer building a career, or part of a publishing team trying to do things differently in an industry that is resistant to change.

At Pellerin, we don’t believe in sending books out with fanfare and then stepping away. We believe in travelling alongside our authors - through launches, backlists, successes, missteps, and everything in between. We give their stories the time and care they need to find their readers, and to keep finding them.

We’re on our own journey too: building a publishing house designed for the industry as it exists today, not as it once was.

Pellerin Books is a digital-focus publisher of popular fiction, built around how readers actually discover books today.

Most people now find their next favourite story online, whether by browsing e-retailers, following a recommendation from a blogger or bookstagrammer, returning to an author they already love, or searching for a book when a friend says “you’ll love this”. That’s true whether they read in ebook, audiobook or paperback.

With that in mind, we’ve made careful, deliberate choices about how we bring great stories to these readers – not to be louder, but to be better.

  • We publish fewer authors, so every book gets the same level of care, editorial attention and long-term support.
  • We publish long-running series, so readers can return to their favourite characters and worlds again and again.
  • We stay with books beyond their launch moment, helping them stay visible online for as long as there are new readers to discover them.
  • We print paperbacks only when someone orders one, because we don’t believe in turning trees into books without good reason.
Much of this happens behind the scenes.

For authors, the result is a publisher who takes their stories seriously, treats them fairly, and stays invested for the long term.

For readers, the result is simple: better books, easier to find – and there whenever you’re ready for them.

At Pellerin Books, we publish popular fiction in the truest sense of the word: books written to be loved, devoured, shared, and returned to.

Our list includes:

  • crime and thrillers
  • romance and romantic fiction
  • family drama and women’s fiction
  • historical fiction and saga
  • historical adventure and military fiction
  • romantasy and speculative fiction
  • science fiction, fantasy and horror
As readers ourselves, we know that stories have the power to transport us, move us, change our minds, or simply make a bad day better. We love nothing more than discovering a character or world that lives beyond the page – and then finding out there is a whole series of those books to enjoy.

That moment of connection when a reader discovers their next favourite author is something extraordinary – and our mission as a publisher is to spark that connection whenever we can.

Pellerin Books is new, but it’s built on decades of experience.

We believe publishing can be better:

  • for readers, who deserve to discover books they’ll truly love
  • for authors, whose stories deserve time, care, and belief
  • for staff, who deserve meaningful creative work and sustainable workloads
  • for the planet, which needs to keep its forests intact.
  • and for the books themselves, whose lives shouldn’t end after launch week.
This is the kind of publishing house we want to build. We hope you’ll join us for the journey.

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How Pellerin came to be

Pellerin Books was founded by Laura Palmer and Jessie Sullivan after many years working in publishing, both separately and together. During that time, they worked with brilliant writers and passionate colleagues, championed hundreds of authors and helped millions of people discover their next favourite read. 

They also noticed a pattern that never quite sat right. In an industry under pressure to cut budgets while publishing more and more books, wonderful stories too often struggled to find their readers – and readers, in turn, missed out on the books they would have loved most.

Publishing can be a joyful, creative and rewarding industry. It can also be slow to change. Many book campaigns are still designed for traditional routes to visibility, rather than to speak directly to the readers they hope to reach. When Jessie and Laura worked together, they focused on testing different ways to publish and market books that aligned more closely with how they are actually discovered, bought and read today. The results spoke for themselves.

Eventually, one idea became impossible to ignore: if they wanted to publish in a way that truly served authors and readers – thoughtfully, fairly and for the long term – they would need to build something new.

That’s what Pellerin Books is – a publishing house that began not with a trend forecast or a rush to disrupt, but with care: for stories, for the people who write them, and for the readers searching for their next favourite book.

Why ‘Pellerin’?

Pellerin is an old word meaning a traveller or a pilgrim – someone on a journey.

We chose the name deliberately. Publishing is rarely a straight path, whether you’re a reader discovering a new author, a writer building a career, or part of a publishing team trying to do things differently in an industry that is resistant to change.

At Pellerin, we don’t believe in sending books out with fanfare and then stepping away. We believe in travelling alongside our authors - through launches, backlists, successes, missteps, and everything in between. We give their stories the time and care they need to find their readers, and to keep finding them.

We’re on our own journey too: building a publishing house designed for the industry as it exists today, not as it once was.

 

What makes Pellerin Books different?

Pellerin Books is a digital-focus publisher of popular fiction, built around how readers actually discover books today.

Most people now find their next favourite story online, whether by browsing e-retailers, following a recommendation from a blogger or bookstagrammer, returning to an author they already love, or searching for a book when a friend says “you’ll love this”. That’s true whether they read in ebook, audiobook or paperback.

With that in mind, we’ve made careful, deliberate choices about how we bring great stories to these readers – not to be louder, but to be better.

  • We publish fewer authors, so every book gets the same level of care, editorial attention and long-term support.
  • We publish long-running series, so readers can return to their favourite characters and worlds again and again.
  • We stay with books beyond their launch moment, helping them stay visible online for as long as there are new readers to discover them.
  • We print paperbacks only when someone orders one, because we don’t believe in turning trees into books without good reason.
Much of this happens behind the scenes.

For authors, the result is a publisher who takes their stories seriously, treats them fairly, and stays invested for the long term.

For readers, the result is simple: better books, easier to find – and there whenever you’re ready for them.

What books do we publish?

At Pellerin Books, we publish popular fiction in the truest sense of the word: books written to be loved, devoured, shared, and returned to.

Our list includes:

 

  • crime and thrillers
  • romance and romantic fiction
  • family drama and women’s fiction
  • historical fiction and saga
  • historical adventure and military fiction
  • romantasy and speculative fiction
  • science fiction, fantasy and horror

A publisher built for the long term

Pellerin Books is new, but it’s built on decades of experience.

We believe publishing can be better:

  • for readers, who deserve to discover books they’ll truly love
  • for authors, whose stories deserve time, care, and belief
  • for staff, who deserve meaningful creative work and sustainable workloads
  • for the planet, which needs to keep its forests intact.
  • and for the books themselves, whose lives shouldn’t end after launch week.

Meet the team

A small, experienced team, brought together by a shared belief in great stories and how much they matter.

Laura Palmer

CEO & Publisher

Laura’s love of storytelling drew her into the publishing industry in 2007 as an assistant at Quercus Books, where she was part of the team that discovered and published Stieg Larsson. In 2010, she joined Corvus, where she rode the ebook boom, delivering sales previously unheard of for new authors, and was shortlisted for the Kim Scott Walwyn prize for women in publishing.

In 2012, she co-founded Head of Zeus, alongside publishing veterans Anthony and Nicolas Cheetham. As executive director and fiction publisher, Laura ran three imprints, published more than a hundred authors and played a central role in turning HoZ into a £10m business which was acquired by Bloomsbury in 2021.

Over the course of her career, Laura has built long-term relationships with authors and agents, rooted in trust, clarity, and a shared passion for great stories. Bestselling authors she has worked with include Dani Atkins, JP Delaney, Dan Jones, Graham Masterton and Amanda Prowse.

Jessie Sullivan

COO & Commercial Director

Jessie Sullivan has spent her career at the intersection of publishing and performance-led marketing. She is one of the most commercially effective marketers in modern publishing, with over £8 million in directly attributed revenue and more than £10 million in total marketing impact.

Having worked across a wide range of traditional, independent, and digital-first publishers, Jessie has developed the strategic, insight-led marketing approach that underpins Pellerin Books. She specialises in marketing strategies and tactics built not just for noise or prestige, but for conversion, retention, and long-term sales - always grounded in how readers actually discover and buy books.

Jessie has worked on hundreds of fiction titles, both traditionally published and self-published, turning audience insight into repeatable, scalable systems that consistently outperform industry benchmarks. Known for combining commercial clarity with calm, transparent communication, she helps authors and teams understand not just what’s happening, but why.

Her work has delivered ROIs of over 1000+%, produced multiple #1 bestsellers, and driven sustained backlist growth. Jessie has been recognised as a ‘Future Industry Leader’ by The Bookseller and shortlisted for ‘Marketing Strategy of the Year’ at the British Book Awards.

Peyton Stableford

Commissioning Editor

Peyton Stableford is a Commissioning Editor at Pellerin Books. After completing a degree in Journalism at the University of Missouri, she moved back to London and started her publishing career at Agora Books, the digital-first publishing arm of the Peters, Fraser Dunlop literary agency. In 2021, she joined Head of Zeus, a division of Bloomsbury Publishing, where she worked on the crime + thriller list, publishing Amazon bestsellers, a Richard & Judy Book Club pick, a Waterstones Book of the Month and a BBC2 Between the Covers Book Club pick.

 

Emma Finnerty

Marketing Manager

Emma Finnerty is the Marketing Manager at Pellerin Books. After completing a BA in English Studies at Trinity College Dublin, she held digital roles at Penguin Press and Simon & Schuster, delivering data-led, platform-first campaigns designed to drive visibility, engagement and sales, and launching high-performing social and influencer programmes. Most recently, she was Marketing and Publicity Manager at Scribe Publications, where she led digital strategy and delivered integrated campaigns across fiction and nonfiction titles.

Jon Rippon

Finance Director & Company Secretary

Jon Rippon is Pellerin Books’ Finance Director and Company Secretary, heading up the company’s finance team.

A highly experienced board-level finance director, Jon has spent his career launching, scaling and advising publishing businesses. He has worked across a wide range of independent publishers, including Welbeck, Boldwood and Vinci, and has been involved in multiple start-ups, acquisitions and company sales across the trade.

Jon worked closely with the founders on the business plan, fundraise and launch of Pellerin Books, and continues to support the company’s long-term growth with a disciplined, commercially-focused approach.

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