Random House Launches Children's Ebooks

Posted on October 31, 2001

Random House Children's Books announced the debut of its ebook publishing program Random View Books. Launching on November 13 with 17 titles, Random View Books will make middle grade and young adult books available to consumers in electronic format. The inaugural list includes authors Gary Paulsen, Christopher Paul Curtis, Patricia Reilly Giff and Philip Pullman. Suggested retail price of Random View Books titles are $3.99 each and will be available in Microsoft Reader, Adobe eBook Reader and Palm Reader.

The program will be marketed to members of the educational field, such as teachers and librarians. Random View Books' titles, which will draw from all Random House Children's Books imprints, will be made available through online retailers as well as the new Yahoo! eBooks Shopping website.

``We see Random View Books as a natural extension of our robust publishing program, which will now include our top authors, illustrators and titles in electronic book format,'' says Mary Beth Kilkelly, Director of New Media Marketing and Electronic Publishing. ``Random House Children's Books foray into the ebook market provides exciting new ways to fulfill the needs of a media savvy generation of young readers and educators. We know that librarians and teachers have been waiting to have classic books such as Bud, Not Buddy and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy in electronic format for their students. We imagine kids will probably ask, ''What took so long?`` And they'll probably be reading electronic books for the rest of their educational lives as well.''

After its November 2001 launch, Random View Books will continue to publish new titles, as well as backlist favorites during each publishing season (Spring, Summer and Fall), with the next collection of titles available during Spring 2002. Random House Children's Books is a division of Random House, Inc., whose parent company is Bertelsmann AG.