Picador is an imprint of Pan Macmillan in the United Kingdom and Australia and of Macmillan Publishing in the United States. Both companies are owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group.
Picador was launched in the UK in 1972 with the aim of publishing outstanding international writing in paperback. In 1990, Picador started publishing its own hardcovers; however in 2007, it announced that in future it expects most new titles to launch as paperback originals, a trend its expects the rest of the other UK publishing industry to follow.
Picador authors have included Jonathan Franzen, Michael Chabon, Angela Carter, Thomas Pynchon, Pankaj Mishra, Bret Easton Ellis and Salman Rushdie.
In the publishing industry, an imprint can mean several different things:
Below are a few examples of imprints (in the meaning of brand names), sorted by publishing company in alphabetical order. It shows the diversity of imprints and how widely they are used in the publishing industry. This list is intended to show examples, not be a comprehensive list, so no more than a few imprints per publishing house are given. Notice that it is possible for imprints to be organized under a publisher that is itself an imprint of an even larger publishing house.