Imprint

In the publishing industry, an imprint can refer to two different things:

It can mean 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. In some cases, the diversity results from the takeover of smaller publishers (or parts of their business) by a larger company. This usage of the word has evolved from the old practice of calling the printing of publisher's name at the bottom of publication's title page an imprint.
It can also refer to a finer distinction of a book's version than "edition". This is 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 assigned to it.

Examples of imprints/publishing brand names

Below are a few examples of imprints (in the meaning of brand names), sorted by publishing company in alphabetical order. It shows 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 itself an imprint of an even larger publishing house.

Airiti
Airiti Press
Dark Horse Comics
DH Press
Devil's Due Publishing
Chaos! Comics
DC Comics
All Star
CMX
Helix
Homage Comics
Humanoids PublishingI LOVE U
Milestone Media
Minx
Paradox Press
Piranha Press
Tangent
Wildstorm
Vertigo
Elsevier - a.o.:
Saunders
Churchill Livingstone
Butterworth-Heinemann
Mosby
Academic Press
Baillière Tindall
Hachette Book Group USA
Twelve
HarperCollins
Amistad
Avon Books
Collins
Ecco Press
Harper & Row
Regan Books
William Morrow & Company
Zondervan
Horizon Scientific Press
Caister Academic Press
Horizon Bioscience
Hyperion
ABC Daytime Press
ESPN Books
Miramax Books
Image Comics
Top Cow Productions
Wildstorm
Infobase Publishing
Chelsea House
Llewellyn Worldwide
Midnight Ink
Flux
Macmillan Publishers
Bedford
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Pan Books
St. Martins Press
Tor Books
Forge
Orb
Marvel Comics
Epic
The Shadowline Saga
Icon
Marvel 2099
Marvel Knights
Marvel Next
Ultimate Marvel
MAX
MC2
New Universe
Penguin Books
Puffin Books (for children's literature)
Allen Lane
E.P. Dutton
Ladybird Books (stand-alone)
Michael Joseph
The Complete Idiot's Guide
Dorling Kindersley
Penguin Special (defunct)
Peregrine Books (defunct)
Viking Press
Random House
Ballantine Books
Del Rey Books
Del Rey Manga
Bantam
Skylark
Spectra
Chatto and Windus
Doubleday
Hutchinson
Alfred A. Knopf
Vintage Books
Vintage Classics
Anchor Books
Clarkson Potter
Scholastic Press
Graphix
Arthur A. Levine Books
Shogakukan
Flower Comics
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
State University of New York Press
Excelsior Editions
Tokyopop
Manga Novels
Wharton School
Wharton School Publishing
Workman Publishing
Algonquin Books
Black Dog & Leventhal
Storey Publishing
Timber Press
HighBridge Audio

The word imprint or masthead is sometimes used on international websites. This is usually a mistake based on the incorrect translation of German websites which are required by German law to contain an "Impressum" (legals, website details).

Translation

The word "Imprint" occurs as such in the following languages: English, German, Polish, Albanian, Swedish.

Translation(s) in other languages: Russian: Импринт, Japanese: インプリント.