Random House Announces Ebook Imprint

Posted on July 31, 2000

Random House has announced a new ebook imprint which will include an editorial list of original electronic books. All the titles will be published early next year. This imprint will publish new fiction and nonfiction and will be called AtRandom, said Ann Godoff, President, Publisher, and Editor-in-chief of the Random House Trade Group, a division of Random House, Inc. who will oversee the new publishing program. Time Warner Publishing also recently announced an ebook division under the name iPublish.com.

AtRandom’s first list of books will be comprised of twenty titles to be published beginning in January 2001 and will cover a variety of genres and categories: business, literary fiction, humor, psychology, technology, popular culture, sports, current events, biography and memoirs. They are being written by well-known authors such as Henry Alford, Po Bronson, Donald Katz, Lewis Lapham, Gary Rivlin, Robert J. Samuelson, and Elizabeth Wurtzel.

Each of the books will be offered in digital formats and also as print-on-demand trade paperback editions. "While technology continues to evolve, the editorial mission of Random House remains the same: to publish the best, widely, and with excellence," Godoff said.

The AtRandom e-books will be sold through online retailers, as will the print-on-demand AtRandom trade paperbacks, which will also be available through bricks-and-mortar booksellers. The AtRandom imprint will be headed by Jonathan Karp, Vice President and Senior Editor at the Random House Trade Group, who has been named to the additional position of Publisher of the new imprint. Karp will continue to acquire books for hardcover publication by Random House as well.

Karp said, "We have named this imprint AtRandom because in the tradition of our founder Bennett Cerf, we will publish at random. The books we publish electronically and digitally will be as diverse and as eclectic as the books we publish on paper. All they will have in common is their creative quality and our passion for them. In putting this list together we had two overriding criteria: singular literacy voices and subjects with inherent appeal to readers most likely to be online."

Among the authors on this first AtRandom list are Henry Alford, who searches for the funniest person on the Internet; psychologist Richard DeGrandpre, who examines how digital life is changing the way we think; Gary Rivlin, who describes the ways of Silicon Valley's greatest "angel" investor; and Elizabeth Wurtzel, who offers advice to the young and perplexed.

The list will include a number of short, unconventional biographies of contemporary figures: Evelyn McDonnell explores the life and music of alternative rock diva Bjork; Sam Williams cracks the code of visionary computer programmer Richard Stallman; Meredith Berkman takes on hockey legend Mark Messier; and Rob Walker deconstructs the meaning of oracular Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

AtRandom will also publish nonfiction collections by noteable journalists. The first list will feature ebooks by New Yorker writer Tad Friend; Newsweek columnist Robert J. Samuelson, Harper's editor Lewis Lapham, and Donald Katz, whose award-winning stories for The New Republic, Rolling Stone, and Worth preceded his career as founder of Audible.com.

There are also several first-time authors, among them: Dave Cullen, a Salon correspondent who broke national news with his coverage of the Columbine high school killings; Robin Shamberg, a New York Press columnist who for two years wrote about her life as a dominatrix; and Natasha Lane Rogoff, a former NBC News producer who is writing The Muppets Take Moscow, a memoir about her experience creating the Russian version of Sesame Street. New York Post columnist Gersh Kuntzman will seek salvation for follically-challenged men everywhere in his book on the quest for the cure for baldness.

AtRandom's featured literary debut is Because She Is Beautiful by first-novelist Cameron Dougan, an assistant manager at the Madison Avenue Bookshop in New York City. Set on Manhattan's Upper East Side, it is the story of the mistress to a married millionaire and her quest for emotional self-worth.

"We hope the AtRandom imprint will afford these and future authors new creative opportunities to write at greater length than magazine nonfiction and fiction editorial space permits and with more immediacy and flexibility than traditional bound book publishing manufacturing schedules usually allow. Moreover, AtRandom e-books can be updated and expanded at any time by their authors," Karp observed.