A publishing company is the company that publishes and distributes a book. An imprint is the company name that a book is printed under. A publisher may have multiple imprints.
In a much more generic way, you could say that publishers are big, somewhat faceless, corporations, whereas imprints are personalities and carry specific meaning to the consumer.
Think of imprints as "brands" owned by a larger company (the way PepsiCo, the company, sells the Pepsi brand, the Gatorade brand, the Tropicana brand, the FritoLay brand, and the Quaker Oats brand).
For example, think of an educational publisher. The Publisher may be John Doe publishing company. But they may own several smaller units or imprints -- say the name "Kid Friendly" for publishing kindergarten books and the name "College Ready" for high school books. The name "Kid Friendly" has its own marketing material and positioning in the market, distinct from "College Ready," even though both are owned by the same John Doe Publishing company.
Likewise, when one company buys another, they often keep the imprints of the previous company because of brand loyalty. Say John Doe sold "Kid Friendly" to Joe Schmo Publishers. Joe Schmo Publishers already has a kindergarten book publisher named "Let's Learn." Now they own the "Kid Friendly" brand/imprint AND the "Let's Learn" brand/imprint. They could combine them, but some customers are used to buying "Kid Friendly" brand and won't want to buy 'Let's Learn" brand, even if they are the same books written by the same people, so the company prints under both names.
Also, in another scenario, a company might want multiple imprints to distinguish its own products from one another in the marketplace. Say, again, an educational publisher has multiple books that are sold to very similar markets, but they want to differentiate them, such as two different biology books for high school. One biology book is for Advanced Placement students; the other is for low-level students. So the same company prints the AP book under the brand/imprint "College Ready," which they use for all the books in their AP line, and the low-level book under the name "You Can Learn," which they use for all low-level books. That way, the customer knows at a glance that a "College Ready" book, regardless of the subject is for advanced students.
Helpful?What is the difference between a publishing company and an imprint company?
The publisher is the umbrella company for the products in each imprint. Most imprints are identifiable genres for each company. Harlequin Blaze books are their more hot and steamy stuff while Harlequin Inspiration is the family oriented stories that usually have no intimacy. Kensington has Aphrodesia for their alternative erotica like same sex or vampire sex with blatant violence and wicca that is based on reality rather than fantasy. Brava is romance Dafina is African American women's romance.
---- And I don't think an ISBN number is given to self published books although some companies do have a limited ability to catalog books and get a legitimate ISBN but I'm sure if you ran it through a bookstore database they wouldn't come up. Those numbers are only for bookstores they have associations with and not on a national level.What is the difference between a publishing company and an imprint company?
Basically same thing, different names. The imprint is the name of the book publisher. You might have a major publisher that has split their business into many different imprints (for instance, they may have separate imprint names for children's books, nonfiction, adult fiction, spiritual, etc.).
Even if you self publish, you need to have an imprint name to get the book's ISBN (the unique number used to catalog the book), so you'd create your own imprint name (for example, Hopes and Dreams Press).
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