The Bookseller - Comment - Have we reached peak imprint?

For decades now, the ‘Big Five' publishers have been swelling in size by amassing a huge number of imprints: names under which they publish that each focus on a specific genre, market or type of book. Some, such as Virago or Fourth Estate, used to be independent publishers, but many, such as Hachette's Brazen Books or Penguin's Fern Press, began within these larger organisations. The question is, does the industry have too many imprints and do they influence how readers behave?

A good place to start, perhaps, is with Penguin Random House, home to the largest collection of imprints in the UK. Its website states that the company owns "300 editorially and creatively independent publishing imprints... together, our imprints publish over 70,000 digital and 15,000 print titles annually, with more than 100,000 eBooks available worldwide".

Take a moment to process those numbers. In the UK, the average number of books a person reads each year is 10. Given the sheer scale of PRH's operation, it's not surprising that dividing itself up into imprints is helpful: they form an infrastructure that maintains variety in this behemoth company.