Do you want your publisher to be a brand?

A new week, a new desk. As of last Thursday I’m spending a month or so at Penguin, covering for an editor who’s off sick. It’s very nice when publishing colleagues are so glad to see me, even when it’s not so much personal as down to the work they are about to get off their desk!

And I’m always interested to see the inside of another publisher. Of course, being a freelancer you have to be very careful not to go around spreading sensitive information, but the basic structuring of lists isn’t a secret. This year I’ve been in-house at Harper and Penguin, and within children’s fiction Harper has three unbranded departments – author fiction, picture books and licensing – while Penguin has lists with their own famous names – e.g. Warne, Puffin, Ladybird, BBC Children’s Books.

This is partly down to history and practicalities, of course: for example, Ladybird was once an independent company that Penguin then acquired, while the BBC are always going to want their tie-ins marked as BBC. But list profiles are also a kind of branding. One that Penguin is using and Harper isn’t. HarperCollins itself is too big to be a brand – it’s a kind of stamp, saying, ‘this book was approved by professionals’ but it’s not a brand like Puffin.

Does this mean HarperCollins Children’s is missing a trick in appealing to readers and authors who are beyond the ‘glad just to be published by anyone’ stage? Or does nobody care apart from us editors?