What is an imprint?

if a Publisher Name is your company name, ie Penguin Ranom House, then an Imprint Name is usually considered to be the “brand” the book is published under, such as Puffin Books.

On picking up a book, it may have ‘Penguin Random House’ or ‘Pearson Education’ listed, but it’s more likely to read something like Picador, Knopf or Heinmann or Longman. These are called imprints.

So, an imprint is a subsidiary of a publishing company, and it’s the name that appears on the book as its publisher. It might typically specialize in a specific subject matter, audience, or genre. For example, Plume is a paperback imprint of Penguin Random House that publishes LGBTQ+ titles.

A major publisher, such as Penguin Random House, HarperCollins and Bloomsbury will have dozens of imprints. HarperCollins has more than 120, and some of those imprints have imprints of their own. To add to this some publishers, when bought by other publishers become imprints, or are sold on to other publishers as imprints.

Essentially for RNIB Bookshare, it is just important to know that you should check for a publisher of a title by its imprint as well as its publisher.