# Imprint

> Source: https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/glossary/imprint

Last updated: 2026-09-06
Category: Publishing & selling
Also called: Publishing imprint · Publisher name

An imprint is the publisher name on a book’s title page, spine and copyright page; big houses run many, and self-publishers often create their own.

## Definition

An **imprint** is a publishing brand. Penguin Random House publishes under hundreds of them — Knopf, Viking, Del Rey — each with its own editorial identity, and a reader who trusts one imprint will try a new author from it. The imprint's name appears at the foot of the title page, on the spine, on the copyright page, and in the ISBN and catalogue records as the *publisher*.

For a self-publishing author, an imprint is the name you publish as instead of your own. There is no registration involved beyond, in some countries, a trading name: you choose a name, use it consistently, and register your ISBNs to it. The practical benefits are that the book looks like the product of a press rather than a person, the same name can cover future titles, and platform-assigned ISBNs (which name the platform as publisher) can be avoided.

The word originally meant the printer's line — "imprinted at London by …" — on early title pages.

## Related

- [ISBN](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/glossary/isbn)
- [Copyright page](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/glossary/copyright-page)
- [Colophon](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/glossary/colophon)
- [Barcode (EAN-13)](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/glossary/barcode)
- [Business Book Maker](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/formats/business-book-maker)
- [How to Write Your First Book](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/guides/how-to-write-your-first-book)
- [Book Publishing Glossary — 59 Terms Defined](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/glossary)
- [Bindery — the Claude-powered book studio](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/bindery)

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