Setting Up a Publishing Imprint

When folks speak of a “publishing imprint”, it could evoke images such as the one featured above. 🙂

However, along with print publishing, there’s also ebook and audiobook publishing. These media have been made much easier to distribute and access because of the Internet.

The cost of entry into the ebook market is relatively low compared to print books. Audiobooks generally require more of either 1) your time and ability to read your own work dramatically (i.e., nearly performing it or, at least, not droning it) or 2) money for production costs. However, many people (young and old) enjoy reading print books. So, I wouldn’t ignore them. That’s just me talking, of course. 🙂

Anyway, let’s get to the subject at hand.

If you are truly an indie author, that means being your own publisher and that means being a publisher. You may be a one-person publisher and only publishing your own work, but you are still a publisher.

And in order to have the appearance, which is important, of professionalism, you should have a trade name under which you publish your books, which is your own imprint.

Mine is Renegade Press, and to use that name, I have filed with my own State Department of Assessments and Taxation for that brand name, for that trade name that I publish under. So what I’m going to do is ask you to check with your own state. Just do a search online for trade names, agencies and the name of your state and see what you come up with and find out where you need to file, if you want to have a publishing trade name and do that thing. And let me know if you were able to do it and what name you chose. Because I would like to see people take action in this area.

When you decide on an imprint name, think about what it is you write and the brand image the name conveys. At the time I picked Renegade Press, I truly felt like some kind of rebel, because self-publishing wasn’t taken terribly seriously by the established publishing world. Plus, I didn’t want to necessarily confine myself to publishing crime fiction.

I want people to do these things because I know they can. Because I did them. And others have done them even more successfully than myself, frankly.

So anyway, I will just leave you with that one thought. Come up with a name for your publishing company. Find out what agency in your state handles that and file with them. And then let me know that you did that and what the name is that you chose. Because I’m curious. And where you filed, too, because it never hurts for me to know that stuff.

Feel free to leave comment on this here blog. 🙂

PS: FYI, I could have set up my imprint as an LLC or “limited liability corporation”, but I haven’t. Not yet, anyway. It’s more expense than it’s worth for me, at this time.

PPS: At some point, I’ll return to the subject of serializing content online. 🙂

PPPS: Have I ever shown you this! 🙂