Random House Inc.

The economics of the book business are changing so rapidly the industry barely looks like it did just six months ago.

The era of the book superstores, with their big windows and welcoming tables stacked high with books, has gone into decline. Many of the country's most enthusiastic readers have already switched to less-costly digital books. Amazon customers now buy more Kindle titles than hardcovers and paperbacks.

Book clubs—of the Book of the Month Club, "get 10 books for a dollar" type, not the Oprah variety—were once an essential revenue stream for the book publishing industry, with millions of customers buying discounted books directly. But today, with deep discounts and wide selections offered by online retailers, book clubs have become much less important to the publishing industry. In a nod to changing times, Random House parent company Bertelsmann is now closing Direct Group, its book clubs and direct marketing division, effective June 30.

Bertelsmann AG has acquired cutting-edge digital media agency Smashing Ideas, Inc. for its Random House, Inc. division, the world’s largest English-language trade book publisher. ... Smashing Ideas is renowned for offering strategic marketing solutions and creating immersive, interactive content experiences, from games to branded sites to story-based applications, across multiple digital distribution channels, including online, smartphones, tablet devices, and iTV.

Publishers Monday scrambled to fill the Osama bin Laden book pipeline, hatching plans for digital titles they could publish almost instantly. Jon Meacham, an executive editor at Random House, is assembling an essay collection about the Al Qaeda leader—titled “Beyond Bin Laden: America and the Future of Terror”—that Random House expects to publish as an e-Book next week.

Others considering a new digital work on Mr. bin Laden include Free Press, an imprint of CBS Corp.’s Simon & Schuster publishing arm.

Here's a look at some 
specific companies in varying industry segments and where they stand on the e-book sales spectrum.

The book publishing industry may be in flux right now, but 2010 was a very good year for Random House Inc.

Random House Inc. released the following statement this afternoon regarding its U.S. e-book sales model:

The clauses have been cleared, the contract signed. "Catch-22" is an e-book. "Catch-22" first came out in 1961 and Simon & Schuster plans a special 50th anniversary edition in hardcover and paperback next year, featuring an introduction by Christopher Buckley and reprints of essays by Norman Mailer, Anthony Burgess and others.

Random House Inc., the world's largest consumer book publisher, is seeking to sublease as many as nine of the 24 floors it now occupies at 1745 Broadway, in a sign that the city's office market is still facing choppy waters.

(Press Release) New York, PRNewswire—Random House Inc., the largest U.S. trade-book publisher, announced today a partnership with digital media agency Smashing Ideas to develop book-based children's Apps for mobile devices.