Imprint: how the face of publishing is changing

A large number of books are published in Italy every year, with a figure of around (or more than) 80,000 copies. The margin of success, however, is very small. Tens of thousands of texts do not even reach bookshops and in general more than 90% of publications sell less than 2,000 copies.

Even bestsellers are not what they used to be. The life cycle, promotion and visibility of books has shortened drastically. Major successes have been greatly reduced in size. Only in the first year do they manage to sell tens or hundreds of thousands of copies. With this in mind, the results of publications are no longer measured by absolute sales figures, but on what is calculated as the overall cost of production, distribution and stock in relation to expectations. For example, a book that is printed in 1,000 copies and will sell exactly those 1,000 copies is a successful investment, because it has earned exactly what was spent on its distribution.

The imprint

In this context, a number of closely related phenomena have gained new impetus. Specifically, the creation of new publishing brands (imprints) and the use of artificial intelligence to streamline and accelerate publication processes. There are two imprints in particular that have received some attention (not without criticism) in the publishing world in recent months. The first is 8080 Books, by Microsoft, which has already published its first work; the second is 8th Note Press, by ByteDance. 8th Note Press will mainly be used as a marketing tool for the distribution of fantasy novels, romance novels and other genres that go viral in the ‘BookTok’ section of TikTok.

The term imprint derives from the vocabulary of Anglo-Saxon publishing, where publishing series are not so common and the market is mainly composed of large industrial groups, which have acquired smaller publishing houses over the decades. In Italy, there is no real counterpart, also because it is rather difficult to define exactly what an imprint is, which often serves as a container or hat based on the publishing opportunities of the moment.

Some examples

A publisher may decide to open a publishing brand based on the selection of a series of books by a famous person (such as the imprint of Oprah Winfrey or Sarah Jessica Parker). The same thing can also happen in the case of people who are not famous, but who already work within the publishing house. If there are no open positions, launching a new publishing brand is the most convenient and economical solution.

Then there are the literary prizes, often characterised by rather strict participation rules. This is the case of the Booker Prize, the most important literary prize for English-language fiction, which allows the nomination of a maximum of three books per imprint. It is not uncommon for ad hoc ones to be created in order to be able to submit more titles to the jury.

Finally, as already mentioned, in the Anglo-Saxon world, medium and smaller publishers are often reduced to imprints. This purely marketing operation essentially serves to reduce costs and distinguish between products that appeal to different types of readers.

Differences and hierarchies

There are several thousand publishing houses in Italy, each with its own editorial line, established at the top, which determines the eventual creation of one or more book series. Publications in this category can be defined by a common discipline, idea or subject matter. However, there are also series in which it is not the content that unites the individual volumes. In this case, the operation is carried out retrospectively and the point of unity is precisely the editorial format.

The people who work on the books of an imprint are, to all intents and purposes, employees or collaborators of the publishing house that owns the imprint. In this sense, the imprint is closer to the concept of a publishing series than of a publishing house. It would be more correct to say that it is in the middle of these two things. The publishing imprint has, in general, more independence in its management and editorial line.

And in Italy?

All the cases described above are also beginning to be explored in Italy. For example, Rizzoli has recently announced a new imprint edited by Megi Bulla, one of Italy’s best-known book publishers. Feltrinelli launched Gramma last July, a publishing brand dedicated to the rediscovery of classics and quality literary and non-fiction fiction. Edizioni E/O, famous for publishing Elena Ferrante’s novels, also created the imprint Ne/oN, which deals with the distribution of foreign novels related to the fantastic.

The impression is that many publishing houses are using the imprint as a cover to expand and diversify their offer. In this way, they avoid distorting their own nature in the eyes of readers and support new imprints with a reputation built up over the years. It is certainly a choice that speaks volumes about how the publishing situation is evolving. It will be interesting to see whether, in the coming years, it proves to be a correct strategy for the revival of publishing or yet another washout.