Treatment of publishers, divisions and imprints

Many independent publishers are now either divisions or imprints of multinational publishing groups.

To give one example: Pan Books began as an independent publisher in 1944 and was later bought by a consortium of Macmillan, Collins, Heinemann, and briefly, Hodder & Stoughton. It became wholly owned by Macmillan in 1987, which is now owned by Holtzbrinck Publishing Group (Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck).

Therefore Pan Books could be treated as either a publisher, division or imprint at some point during its existence.

Pan could be treated as an abbreviated form of Pan Books, or as an imprint of Pan Books or Macmillan or Pan MacMillan UK.

Pan MacMillan UK, Pan Books and Pan all exist as separate Publishers on BB. I wonder if Pan should simply be an alias of Pan Books.

This situation applies to many other Publisher entities which have convoluted histories.

I suppose my point is do we really need a separate Publisher record for every variation of the name?

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Hmmpfff…I’ve encountered this issue a few times and I always managed to push it aside successfully.
Now the Goddesses of Vengeance reappeared and touch their fingers on the whore spot. Thanks!!
Please go back into your rabbit hole and come out again around 2025. I will work on the answer and provide a synopsis until then…

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Obi Indie Kenobi: “This is NOT the topic your are looking for!!!” :wave:

I have marked up the calendar. I hope I’m still around in 2025.

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Here’s a good example of a convoluted history. It helps to be a Philadelphia lawyer to make sense of it all:

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