Imprint (trade name)

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An imprint of a publisher is a trade name under which it publishes a work. A single publishing company may have multiple imprints, often using the different names as brands to market works to various demographic consumer segments. [1]

Contents

Description

An imprint of a publisher is a trade name—a name that a business uses for trading commercial products or services—under which a work is published. Imprints typically have a defining character or mission. In some cases, the diversity results from the takeover of smaller publishers (or parts of their business) by a larger company. In the case of Barnes & Noble, imprints have been used to facilitate the venture of a bookseller into publishing. [2]

In the video game industry, some game companies operate various publishing labels with Take-Two Interactive credited as "the father of label" in their case the labels are wholly owned incorporated entities with their own publishing and distributing, sales and marketing infrastructure and management teams and their own respective subsidiaries also incorporated (Rockstar North Limited, 2K Vegas, Inc.). This model has influenced rivals including Activision Blizzard, ZeniMax, Electronic Arts from 2008 to 2018, Warner Bros. Interactive, Embracer Group, and Koei Tecmo. Take-Two have had such models in place since 1997–1998, and is seen as "a game holding company with autonomous game publishing and development subsidiaries". [3] [4] Independently-owned game publishers like Devolver Digital also use the word "label" to describe itself.

Use

A single publishing company may have multiple imprints, with the different imprints often used by the publisher to market works to different demographic consumer segments. For example, the objective of Viking—an imprint of the Penguin Group—is "[t]o publish a strictly limited list of good nonfiction, such as biography, history and works on contemporary affairs, and distinguished fiction with some claim to permanent importance rather than ephemeral popular interest". [5]

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">MicroProse</span> American video game company

MicroProse is an American video game publisher and developer founded by Bill Stealey, Sid Meier, and Andy Hollis in 1982. It developed and published numerous games, including starting the Civilization and X-COM series. Most of their internally developed titles were vehicle simulation and strategy games.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Take-Two Interactive</span> American video game holding company

Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. is an American video game holding company based in New York City founded by Ryan Brant in September 1993.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DK (publisher)</span> British publisher of non-fiction books

Dorling Kindersley Limited is a British multinational publishing company specialising in illustrated reference books for adults and children in 63 languages. It is part of Penguin Random House, a subsidiary of German media conglomerate Bertelsmann. Established in 1974, DK publishes a range of titles in genres including travel, history, geography, science, space, nature, sports, gardening, cookery, parenting and many others. The worldwide CEO of DK is Paul Kelly. DK has offices in New York, Melbourne, London, Munich, New Delhi, Toronto, Madrid, Beijing, and Jiangmen. DK works with licensing partners such as Disney, LEGO, DC Comics, the Royal Horticultural Society, MasterChef, and the Smithsonian Institution. DK has commissioned authors such as Mary Berry, Monty Don, Robert Winston, Huw Richards, and Steve Mould for a range of books.

Macmillan Publishers is a British publishing company traditionally considered to be one of the 'Big Five' English language publishers. Founded in London in 1843 by Scottish brothers Daniel and Alexander MacMillan, the firm would soon establish itself as a leading publisher in Britain. It published two of the best-known works of Victorian era children's literature, Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book (1894).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grolier</span> Publisher of educational and reference books

Grolier was one of the largest American publishers of general encyclopedias, including The Book of Knowledge (1910), The New Book of Knowledge (1966), The New Book of Popular Science (1972), Encyclopedia Americana (1945), Academic American Encyclopedia (1980), and numerous incarnations of a CD-ROM encyclopedia (1986–2003).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Light novel</span> Popular type of Japanese literature genre

A light novel is a type of popular literature novel native to Japan, usually classified as young adult fiction targeting teens to twenties. The definition is very vague, and wide-ranging.

Disney Publishing Worldwide (DPW), formerly known as The Disney Publishing Group and Buena Vista Publishing Group, is the publishing subsidiary of Disney Experiences, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. Its imprints include Disney Editions, Disney Press, Kingswell, Freeform, and Hyperion Books for Children. It has creative centers in Glendale, California, and Milan, Italy.

Hachette Books, formerly Hyperion Books, is a general-interest book imprint of the Perseus Books Group, which is a division of Hachette Book Group and ultimately a part of Lagardère Group. Established in 1990, Hachette publishes general-interest fiction and non-fiction books for adults. A former subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, it was originally named after Hyperion Avenue, the location of Walt Disney Studios prior to 1939. Hachette took over a 1,000 book backlist when Hyperion was purchased from Disney in 2013 with 250 bestselling novels, including Mitch Albom’s The Five People You Meet in Heaven.

TDK Mediactive was the brand name used by Japanese company TDK as a media subsidiary in Europe, and as a video game publishing subsidiary in North America.

Hachette Book Group (HBG) is a publishing company owned by Hachette Livre, the largest publishing company in France, and the third largest trade and educational publisher in the world. Hachette Livre is a wholly owned subsidiary of Lagardère Group. HBG was formed when Hachette Livre purchased the Time Warner Book Group from Time Warner on March 31, 2006. Its headquarters are located at 1290 Avenue of the Americas, Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Hachette is considered one of the "big five" publishing companies, along with Holtzbrinck/Macmillan, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster. In one year, HBG publishes approximately 1400+ adult books, 300 books for young readers, and 450 audiobook titles. In 2017, the company had 167 books on the New York Times bestseller list, 34 of which reached No. 1.

The Egmont Group is a Danish media corporation founded and rooted in Copenhagen, Denmark. The business area of Egmont has traditionally been magazine publishing, but has over the years evolved to comprise mass media generally.

Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. (GPG), also known as ABC-Clio/Greenwood, is an educational and academic publisher which is today part of ABC-Clio. Established in 1967 as Greenwood Press, Inc. and based in Westport, Connecticut, GPG publishes reference works under its Greenwood Press imprint, and scholarly, professional, and general interest books under its related imprint, Praeger Publishers. Also part of GPG is Libraries Unlimited, which publishes professional works for librarians and teachers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ASCII Media Works</span> Japanese publishing company

ASCII Media Works, formerly ASCII Media Works, Inc., is a Japanese publisher and brand company of Kadokawa Future Publishing headquartered in Nishi-Shinjuku, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan. It originally formed on April 1, 2008, as a result of a merger between ASCII Corporation and MediaWorks where MediaWorks legally absorbed ASCII. Despite this, the former president and CEO of ASCII, Kiyoshi Takano, became the first president and CEO of ASCII Media Works. It became an internal division of Kadokawa Corporation on October 1, 2013.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Minos EMI</span> Greek music recording company

Minos EMI is a record company based in Athens, Greece. The company serves as the Greek record label and offices of the multinational Universal Music Group.

MediaWorks, Inc. was a Japanese publishing company in the Kadokawa Group known for their Dengeki brand magazines and book labels. These included such well-known magazines as Dengeki Daioh, and Dengeki G's Magazine, along with MediaWorks' main light novel publishing imprint Dengeki Bunko. The company was merged with ASCII on April 1, 2008, and became ASCII Media Works. They mainly catered to the Japanese male otaku crowd, covering such topics as anime, light novels, manga, plastic modelling, and visual novels. However, MediaWorks had published three magazines targeted towards females—Comic Sylph, Dengeki Girl's Style, and Character Parfait—but each one was a special edition version of another magazine. MediaWorks ran yearly contests for original novel and manga submissions, such as the light novel Dengeki Novel Prize contest.

Double Take LLC, commonly referred to as Double Take Comics, was an American comic book publisher based in New York City. Founded by former Marvel Comics executive Bill Jemas as a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive in October 2014, the company served as Take-Two Interactive's pilot project in comic book publishing. The company published five issues each from ten original comic book series, and was shut down in November 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Private Division</span> American video game publisher

Private Division is an American video game publisher based in New York City. The company was founded by Take-Two Interactive and announced in December 2017. Private Division funds and publishes indie games developed by small to mid-sized studios. This includes taking over Kerbal Space Program publishing and releasing titles from Obsidian Entertainment, Panache Digital Games, and V1 Interactive.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Association for UK Interactive Entertainment</span> Non-profit trade association

The Association for UK Interactive Entertainment (Ukie) is a non-profit trade association for the video game industry in the United Kingdom (UK). Ukie was founded in 1989 as the European Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), then changed to Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA) in 2002, and to its current name in 2010.

References

  1. ↑ Friedlander, Joel (2015-02-09). "A Quick Lesson About Publishers, Imprints, CreateSpace, and Bowker". The Book Designer. Retrieved 2016-07-29.
  2. ↑ "Industry Overview: Journalism and Publishing". Wet Feet. Archived from the original on 2016-08-17. Retrieved 2016-07-29.
  3. ↑ "Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick: 'I'm charged with making hard decisions'". 18 June 2018.
  4. ↑ "EA CEO pledges freedom to Take-Two Interactive's developers". 3 March 2008.
  5. ↑ "What is an imprint?". The Book Publicity Blog. 2009-07-14.
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