Mills & Boon is a great example of strong publisher brand though, because I believe its brand exceeds the individual sales power of any one author. Of the thousands of authors published under the Mills & Boon imprint, only a relative handful have broken out to establish their own author brand. Readers seek out Mills & Book titles because they want a particular kind of reading experience and they trust M&B to deliver it. That’s an incredibly powerful market position for any publisher to occupy.

Penguin is also interesting, though, because I think it developed the same kind of publisher brand power in the early days of Allen Lane’s “Penguins”. Penguin paperbacks were a simple, limited concept in the early days – quality, affordable, accessible literature in paperback. Perhaps the simple brand message was part of its overwhelming success. Over the decades, Penguin has grown and so has its reputation but it no longer has the same sense of focused brand identity for general consumers. I doubt people walk into a bookstore thinking “I want to buy a Penguin today”.

Best wishes,
Kate.

More recently I’m sensing that the more entrepeneurial self-published authors are creating publishing brands under which they offer products by others that are likely to appeal to their own loyal readers. I use the word “products” advisedly, because we’re at the point where the book is only one manifestation of many possible forms that intellectual property can take. For those of us who cut our publishing teeth in the book world, that’s a hard nut to swallow and digest. As we speak, publishing is being redefined. Tech savvy and an understanding that customers are looking for good content in a flexible medley of formats are the hallmarks of these new publishers and they’re creating their own brands as they go.

I stumbled across this post through a link from O’Reilly TOC (http://toc.oreilly.com/2008/10/do-publisher-brands-still-have.html) and your question was just what I was looking for. I’ve been thinking about publishers creating a brand and whether it was worthwhile, and I think I might have finally found the way to phrase the question for my Publishing MA dissertation.

Thanks for thinking out loud here and giving me some clarity! -Elaina

On the other hand, most authors definitely have more to say to their fans than can or should fit within a publisher’s branding scope. I like to see publishers’ sites include a portal/hub where authors’ blogs can be listed and featured.