Are Barnes & Noble, Books a Million, and Indigo making a wise move by not carrying the books from Amazon’s publishing arm, or are they cutting off their noses to spite their faces? This is the question that Mike Shatzkin addresses in his latest column. He notes that a reporter contacted him, undoubtedly expecting the same sort of attacks on the move posted by some major media outlets, and was rather surprised when Shatzkin said that, from a self-interested point of view, the decision made perfect sense. Shatzkin recapitulates the recent history between Amazon, the Big Six publishers, and...

From a Publisher’s Weekly Article by Andrew Albanese: Never has a price increase been such good news for libraries. At a meeting with ALA leaders this week in New York, Random House officials said the “terms of sale” for Random House e-books to libraries will change, with a price increase coming. But the publisher reiterated its commitment to library e-book lending, saying they would continue to enable e-book lending of their entire list for both adult and children’s titles, backlist and frontlist, without restriction. “No change,” Random House spokesman Stuart Applebaum told PW in a briefing this morning, when asked about...

From the press release: Random House Children’s Books (www.randomhouse.com/kids) and Sesame Workshop, the producer behind Sesame Street®, announced today the launch of a new digital publishing initiative, which will focus on early learning and reading readiness.  Select titles from the Random House Children’s Books Sesame Street® library will be available as ebooks for the first time, beginning January 25 with Elmo Says Achoo! and Elmo’s Breakfast Bingo. The digital editions will be available in the U.S. and Canada wherever Random House ebooks are sold. An additional 19 titles will be released this spring, including Get Moving with Grover, Big Bird Says...

From paidContent: Condé Nast cooking site Epicurious is selling Random House digital cookbooks that users can import into their “digital recipe boxes.” However, they cannot access the cookbooks they buy anywhere except through the Epicurious app. Epicurious plans to partner with other publishers as well, but the program’s initial launch is with 75 Random House cookbooks from across the company’s imprint and includes titles from Bobby Flay, Giada DeLaurentiis and Martha Stewart, among others. Earlier this year, Random House signed up as an Epicurious content partner and made some individual recipes available through the site. ...

That's the title of an article in  Publishers Weekly: And then there was one. After Penguin announced this week that it was pulling its frontlist e-book titles from libraries and disabling all Kindle library lends, Random House remains the only “Big Six” publisher to embrace library sales of e-book editions. But with the e-book market changing, and discord over Amazon’s recent moves in the marketplace simmering, is the company reconsidering its position? In a brief statement, Random House officials said that for now the company was "maintaining its current policy regarding digital library sales," but ...

From the Politico site: POLITICO has taken its second step into the book business today with the launch of an online bookstore, in partnership with Random House, of political books curated by POLITICO’s editors. “POLITICO Bookshelf” will be operated by Random House featuring books on current events, politics, history and biography. A quick gander through its debut arrangement shows books ranging from Herman Cain’s campaign autobiography to Matt Taibbi’s “Griftopia.” It also features a prominent opportunity to pre-order POLITICO’s first step into book publishing: the e-book “Playbook 2012: The Right Fights Back,” written by Mike...

From Publishers Weekly: Bantam’s Loveswept imprint was one of the most popular romance imprints in the 1980s and 1990s and now Random House is reviving Loveswept as an e-book only line that will release its first titles in August. The new imprint will be a collaboration between Random U.S. and Random House Group’s Transworld Publishers division which will let the company release e-books simultaneously in North America, the U.K., and the British Commonwealth. In the U.S., each title will include bonus content, and previously released titles will be reintroduced with new packaging. Random is promising an “aggressive marketing campaign” the will feature...

A couple of months ago, agent Sonia Land of the Sheil Land literary agency placed Catherine Cookson’s backlist titles directly on Amazon, without consulting their print publisher, Random House, or offering it a chance to be part of the deal. Now it would seem that Random House has struck back, closing a backlist e-book deal with author Tom Sharpe and bypassing Land, who is also his agent. On FutureBook, Philip Jones writes: Agents will fume: one said the gloves were now off. Anthony Goff, president of the Association of Authors Agents, told me that undermining the...

The Bookseller reports that in an address to the World e-Reading Congress, Random House’s deputy chairman Ian Hudson said that he expects e-book sales to exceed 8% of trade publishers’ sales in 2011, and possibly to reach 15% next year. He also reported that e-book sales in 2011 were so far outstripping 2010’s by a factor of 10 overall, though some titles sell better electronically than others. Hudson argued that traditional publishers are still going to be necessary into the e-publishing future because certain things such as editing will always be necessary to produce a readable book, and publishers...

That's what The Bookseller is reporting.  In a statement Random House said: "The Random House Group (RHG) is to make its full UK catalogue of e-books available for the first time on Apple's iBookstore in the UK. The move is part of our mission to make our authors' books available to as many readers as possible in whichever format they prefer. RHG titles will be available from today (Tuesday, May 10th). iBookstore is included in the free iBooks app for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch." According to the article, agency pricing is not being extended, at this time, across all retailers and...

According to The Bookseller, Random House will be releasing, as an ebook and audio download, Beyond Bin Laden: The Future of Terror.  It is a series of essays edited by Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Meacham and will be released in the UK and Commonwealth (but not Canada).  No mention of whether it will be released in the US. Random House senior editor, Drummond Moir, said: "It was conceived last Monday and we bought it on Friday. It's an experiment and it's very exciting." On the subject matter, Moir added: "It's huge news. The essays are very insightful, it has a huge breadth...

There is no question for me that children's books are the premier application for iPad apps in the reading area. I just couldn't resist reprinting this press release, it brings back too many memories: Random House Children’s Books (www.randomhouse.com/kids), announced today that the pat the bunny (www.rhkidsapps.com/patthebunny) interactive app is now available in the iTunes® store. Developed in collaboration with leading digital media agency Smashing Ideas, the universal app for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch is based on Dorothy Kunhardt’s touch-and-feel children’s book classic. When pat the bunny was originally published in 1940, it was groundbreaking in its use of...