Branding Revisited

When I started Sepulculture, one of my first posts was about branding and the book industry. Some of my comments were noted by Michael Cader in Publishers Lunch. He pointed out that Vintage Books was one of the most recognizable brands in publishing, despite my claim that Vintage seemed a little schizophrenic with all of its sub-imprints. I still stand by what I said. While Vintage is widely recognized within the publishing industry, among few consumers is it a known "brand" in the way other products are. I think in publishing we sometimes forget that the book buyers at Barnes and Noble and Borders aren't the end consumer. But the question I find useful from Cader's remark is whether or not it matters for a publisher to have brand identity among consumers? Certainly it matters with our retailers -- I want B+N to think of Vintage as the publisher of great literary fiction and non-fiction, but how much effort should Vintage put into conveying that impression to consumers? Typically in the industry we don't invest much (if any) capital in marketing ourselves. We invest the overwhelming majority of our resources in branding our individual authors, building awareness of their names and titles among consumers. But is there a point to also developing a consumer sense of what "types" of books we as a specific publisher produce? I feel there are.

In working to promote some of our recent trade paperback originals to young readers, it has frequently occurred to me that I could really save a lot of effort in trying to explain to these kids that our books are smart and cool and interesting to them. If they understood that Vintage frequently publishes these type of books that they enjoy, I wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel every time out. I think about the way that independent record labels have successfully managed to this with this very same demographic -- kids know what to expect from a Vagrant or Saddle Creek band, Side One Dummy or Drive-Thru Records band. Why shouldn't publishers enjoy a similar recognition? I guess there's no reason why they shouldn't, only a question of whether or not it's possible. If anyone out there is still reading, I would to hear your thoughts. Is branding only effective for small labels, or in the book business small publishers? One of my favorite publishers is Soft Skull Press. I think they could make Soft Skull a really strong identifiable source among young people. I would assume their marketing budgets are slim (or non-existent), but I think a lot of this work (especially when you're talking about grass-roots efforts anyway) could be done very inexpensively. A topic for further consideration.