Random House Inc.

Acup of tea and a book: It’s a dream date for many readers, and Random House Inc. has found a way to take advantage of that. The publishing giant has teamed up with tea company Celestial Seasonings to create a Web-based book club, open to anyone who drinks tea. And it seems most readers do. The book club, “Adventure at Every Turn” (www.CelestialSeasoningsBookClub.com), was created after a Celestial Seasonings survey showed that 70 percent of tea drinkers claimed that reading books is their favorite pastime. The tea company chose Random House as a partner for its club because it lends the program credibility, says

As Kermit the Frog used to say: “It’s not easy being green.” While the beloved puppet was referring to his skin color, the saying has been applied to being “green” in the environmental sense. And, not to make light of a serious situation regarding our environment, the saying has been relevant in book publishing for years—many publishers have “good intentions” (as Book Business columnist Gene Schwartz suggests in this month’s “Gene Therapy”), but they struggle to balance those good intentions with negative impacts on their bottom lines and/or their lack of know-how for making their intentions realities. But as Kermit’s outlook changes in the

Book Business has released the results of its first annual “20 Best Book Publishing Companies to Work For” study in this month’s issue of the magazine. The study, conducted in cooperation with Accelara Publishing Research, ranked New York-based Random House Inc. as the No. 1 book publishing company to work for, with an overall rating of 96.5 out of 100. In addition to the overall rating, companies also received scores in individual categories, including Satisfying High-Performance Company, Fair & Open Work Environment, and Personal Benefits. Random House, the world’s largest English-language trade book publisher, was lauded by its employees for its staff autonomy,

1. Random House Inc. 2. Business 21 Publishing LLC 3. Rodale Inc. 4. Meredith Corp. 5. State University of New York Press 6. Consumers Union 7. Oxford University Press USA 8. BowTie Inc./BowTie Press 9. Pearson/Pearson Education 10. Columbia University Press 11. Lerner Publishing Group 12. Prestwick House Inc. 13. The University of Chicago Press 14. John Wiley & Sons Inc. 15. The Jewish Publication Society 16. Reed Business Information 17. Scholastic

If a formula exists for creating a great work environment, Random House Inc. seems to have found it. The world’s largest trade book publisher has created a structure that strikes a balance between employee support and autonomy, overall corporate vision and individual contributions. Along with a strong ethos of promoting wellness and a healthy work-life balance, the company has, according to its employees, managed to foster a spirit of entrepreneurship and collective responsibility—no mean feat for a book publishing group with a combined workforce of more than 3,000 supporting the publishing efforts of more than 120 separate U.S. imprints. Fostering a great work

Depending on which study results you stumble upon, somewhere between 60 percent and almost 90 percent of Americans don’t like their jobs. And somewhere between 1 million and 1.4 million people call in sick every day. Sure, a percentage of those people probably have the flu, migraines or other ailments, but many of them likely have a serious case of Ihatemyjobitis. Book Business’ first annual study on the “20 Best Book Publishing Companies to Work For” explores which companies in the industry rank highest among their employees for overall job satisfaction. Each company that was nominated by its employees was rated based on

“We are leading the pack by building a digital warehouse, which is the digital equivalent of our print warehouse,” commented Jane Friedman, president and CEO of HarperCollins Publishers, in the May issue of Book Business. This is the ultimate sign-off on the industry’s embrace of the future, and its take-back of content control from trailblazers such as Google, Amazon and Yahoo. For some years now, various technology vendors have enabled publishers to deliver electronically formatted versions of their titles for special purposes. These have included applications such as conversions to XML formats (e.g., Publishing Dimensions), proprietary e-book reader formats (Mobipocket), sight-impaired applications (National

Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House Inc., has introduced a new program titled “Color to Read,” a loyalty program designed to reward children as they take the first steps toward independent reading. Starting in August, the back cover of select color and activity titles will be tagged with a Color to Read cutout token. The program works by allowing consumers to collect the tokens and redeem them for selected titles from the Step Into Reading program. Consumers can visit ColorToRead.com to print and fill out a book request, and mail it with their tokens to Random House Children’s Books. The company

Green is the new black … or is it the new pink? Either way, green is in. With more and more of corporate America joining the green movement, environmental sustainability continues to gain momentum in society. But the decision to do one’s part to help the environment starts with the individual, which is exactly who one publisher is betting on with its launch of “The Green Book” this month. “The Green Book,” penned by Elizabeth Rogers and Thomas M. Kostigen, is a collection of more than 400 tips people can incorporate into their everyday lives to make a positive impact on the environment. Most

If distribution means getting books into the hands of sellers, circulators or readers, then a true profile of the distribution business would cast a wide net, beginning at the binding line and continuing through to the ‘long tail’ of online portals, used bookstores and curbside pushcarts. However, if distribution, from the publisher’s view, means getting books to generate sales revenue, we can overlook all of the aftermarket, recirculation and reselling channels and focus solely on reaching stores, libraries, online and catalog warehouses and—increasingly, thanks to the Internet—direct marketing from the publisher to the consumer. In the article “Deconstructing Distribution,” in Book Business’