In the publishing industry, an imprint is a brand name under which a work is published. One single publishing company may have multiple imprints; the different imprints are used by the publisher to market the work to different demographic consumer segments. It can also refer to a finer distinction than "edition"--used to distinguish, for example different printings, or printing runs of the same edition, or to distinguish the same edition produced by a different publisher or printer. With the creation of the "ISBN" identification system, which is assigned to a text prior to its printing, a different imprint has effectively come to mean a text with a different ISBN — if one had been asigned to it.
Examples of imprints
Below are a few examples of imprints, sorted by publishing company in alphabetical order, showing the diversity of imprints and how widely they are used in the publishing industry. This list is intended to show examples, not be a comprehensive list, so no more than a few imprints per publishing house are given. Notice that it is possible for imprints to be organized under a publisher that is in turn an imprint of an even larger publishing house.
- Hyperion Books
- ABC Daytime Press
- ESPN Books
- Miramax Books
- Llewellyn Worldwide
- Midnight Ink
- Flux
- Macmillan Publishers
- Bedford
- Farrar, Straus & Giroux
- Pan Books
- St. Martins Press
- Tor Books
- Forge
- Orb
- Penguin Books
- Puffin Books (for children's literature)
- Allen Lane
- Ladybird Books (stand-alone)
- Michael Joseph
- Dorling Kindersley
- Penguin Special (defunct)
- Peregrine Books (defunct)
- Scholastic Press
- Graphix
- Simon & Schuster
- Pocket Books
- Scribner
- The Free Press
- St. Martin's Press
- St. Martin's Griffin
- St. Martin's Minotaur
- Picador USA
- Thomas Dunne Books
- Truman Talley Books
- The Ink & Paper Group, LLC
- Bowler Hat Comics
- Chain Reaction Press
- Gray Sunshine
- Sofa Ink
- Tokyopop
- Manga Novels