Publishers, imprints, series and printers in a book

A paperback can name four or five companies. The spine carries a logo and a brand name, a series name sits above the title, the copyright page gives a company's full name and address, and the last line reads "Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc". Each one did something different, and each goes in the edition's Credits with its own role. This guide says which is which, and what to do when the same company turns up under five spellings.

Publisher

The publisher is the company that issued the book and is responsible for it. Look on the copyright page first: it usually gives the full name, often with "Ltd", "Inc." or "GmbH", and an address. Credit it with the role "Publisher". The first Publisher credit is the one shown in the Editions table on the book's page, so if a book names more than one, put the main one first. The city the book was published in goes in the edition's Location field, as printed.

Credit the name the book prints. If the book says only "Faber & Faber", don't upgrade it to "Faber & Faber Ltd" because you know the book is British. Faber also had an American company, and a guess written as a fact sends the next person looking for a difference that isn't there.

Imprint

An imprint is a brand a publisher issues books under. Viking is an imprint of Penguin; Harper Perennial is an imprint of HarperCollins; Hamish Hamilton is another Penguin imprint. Big publishers keep many of them, each with its own character, and many were once independent publishers that were bought and kept as names. The imprint is usually what is printed on the spine and the title page, often with a logo. Credit it with the role "Imprint".

The trouble is that there is no fixed definition, and it is the publisher who decides what to call its names. Some signs:

• A line saying "X is an imprint of Y" settles it. Few books are that clear.
• "X Books are published by Y, Inc." suggests X is an imprint, but the same wording is also used for series.
• A short name or logo on the spine, such as Heyne for Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, may be only a short form of the publisher's name rather than an imprint.
• Publishers' own websites often list their imprints. They can surprise you: according to their publishers, NYRB Classics is an imprint and Barnes & Noble Classics is a series, though the books look much the same.

When you can't tell, credit the copyright-page name as Publisher and the spine or title-page name as Imprint if it differs. The advice on the old forum to anyone stuck on this was not to worry too much: enter it as best you can, and it can be corrected when someone finds out more.

Publisher's series

A series is a line of books a publisher issues under one name and design: Penguin Modern Classics, or Carlsen's Pixi-Bücher in Germany. Credit the series with the role "Publisher Series", and put the book's number within it, if it has one, in the identifying codes as "Series Number". A series is not a company, but it gets its own entry like one, so every book in it lines up on that entry's page.

Printer

The printer made the physical book. British books almost always name it, usually at the foot of the copyright page or on the last page: "Printed in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading". Pick the role that matches the wording: "Printed by", "Printed and Bound by", "Bound by", "Typeset by" or "Cover Printed by". Other countries are less consistent, and many American books name no printer at all.

Printers matter more than they seem. A new printing can come from a different printer, and sometimes the printer's name is the only thing on the copyright page that changed.

When two names are one company

The same company appears on books under many spellings, and every spelling risks becoming a new entry. ctlgs has more than one entry for Cox & Wyman Ltd and for Clays Ltd, the two big British paperback printers, because each spelling on the copyright page got its own entry on Bookogs.

Bookogs members settled the easy part in 2017: names that differ only in how the same words are written are one company. That covers "&" and "and", "Ltd", "Ltd." and "Limited", "Co." and "Company", "Bros." and "Brothers", and stray commas.

They also agreed, after a longer argument, that a town or a parent company added to the name doesn't make a new company. "Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading" and "Cox & Wyman Ltd, London, Reading and Fakenham" are the same printer naming its offices. "Clays Ltd, St Ives plc" is Clays naming its owner at the time. auboisdormant made the case: "if the books had "Clays Ltd, a division of St Ives plc" we wouldn't even be having this discussion."

A real change of name is different. Richard Clay Ltd became Clays Ltd in 1989. A company that is sold and trades under a new name, or a sister company in another country such as Faber and Faber, Inc. in the United States, is a separate entry. Write the history in each entry's profile, with links to the names that came before and after, so someone landing on one can find the others.

Recording the name exactly as printed

You don't need a new entry to record a spelling. In the Credits field, link the existing company, then click the settings button on the linked name and change "Display as" to the name exactly as your book prints it. The edition then shows that name, linked to the one company, with an asterisk when it differs from the company's main name. Every spelling stays on record and all the books still line up on one page.

If you find two entries that are the same company, post both links on the forum and ask for them to be merged. Each edition keeps the name it prints.

A worked example: Cox & Wyman

Writing a profile for Cox & Wyman, auboisdormant traced the firm's names back to its founding. Their quick research, which they said might not be exact, ran roughly like this: Edward Cox in the 1770s; Cox and Baylis, and Cox, Son and Baylis, in the early 1800s; Cox (Bros.) and Wyman by the mid-1800s; Wyman & Sons from about 1859; Cox & Wyman Limited from about 1959; and CPI Cox & Wyman from 2010 to 2015, when it was part of the CPI group.

By the rules above, that is several entries, one for each real name, not one for every way a copyright page spelled them. Only the last few names turn up on books most collectors own. The rest belong in the profile, where they tell a reader that the "Cox & Wyman" on a 1970s Pan paperback and the "CPI Cox & Wyman" on a 2012 one are the same printer under a new owner.