Random House Going Digital With Thousands Of Books

NEW YORK — With e-book sales exploding in an otherwise sleepy market, Random House Inc. announced Monday that it was making thousands of additional books available in digital form, including novels by John Updike and Harlan Coben, as well as several volumes of the "Magic Treehouse" children's series.

Random House CEO Markus Dohle said in a statement that "more people everyday are enjoying reading in the electronic format and Random House wants to extend our reach to them with more of our books."

The publisher already has more than 8,000 books in the electronic format and will have a digital library of nearly 15,000. The new round of e-books is expected to be completed within months; excerpts can be viewed online through the publisher's Insight browsing service.

Random House's vice president for digital operations, Matt Shatz, says e-book sales have increased by triple digit percentages in 2008, thanks in part to Amazon.com's Kindle reader, but he declined to offer specific number. E-books remain a tiny part of the overall market, widely estimated in the industry at 1 percent or less.

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On the Net: http://www.randomhouse.com/

Comments

[karen1p]

I don't want to read a digital book. I see this as a VERY bad, bad move.

[luv2read]

I can't see in any way how this could be bad for anybody. If you don't want to read a digital book, don't. Nobody is forcing you to. They're not replacing traditional books. But, for the many people who use e-readers (Kindle, Sony, etc..), including me, this is wonderful news. I hope that eventually all books from all publishers are made available in digital form.

I've read more books in the past 6 months than I had in probably the past 10 years, all because of the immediate availability and portability of my books. I can carry my entire library in the space of one paperback book.

[pir anha]

you don't, so what? don't read them. i do, now that there are readers that provide decent resolution (i read ebooks on my OLPC XO for now, until the price for dedicated readers come down). i spend a considerable amount of my book budget on ebooks now, and the more become available the more that will increase. ebooks will never replace all books for me, but they most definitely are my favourite medium for quick-read fiction and reference now (it is so much faster to search an ebook for specific information).

how is that a bad, bad move for random house anyway, your interest notwithstanding? it doesn't cost a publisher a whole lot to make digital copies available.

[sejdv]

I'm sorry that you feel that way. As a medical student I am very much inundated with large and heavy medical resources. I find that e-books would greatly resolve this problem for me. I would not have to worry about carrying a ton of "weights" with me everyday and I find this to be a very good help for the environment, unless of course, you are one of those industrial proponents of polution and toxic waste. Try looking at it from this perspective and maybe you'll change your mind. Granted not many text books have been converted to e-books but I'm sure things will catch up.

Text books are incredibly expensive much less heavy. If you have scoliosis, you'd understand that. If you have children, would you rather suffer them carrying all this weight? Also, don't you think that they would be more driven to read from a great gadget than having to turn through the pages? Besides, you save yourself and others from getting a papercut and save yourself from allergies resulting from the dust collecting on the books in your study (unless you're one of those you let things lie around collecting dirt - VERY, VERY, VERY BAD! )

Try to expand your horizons a little. There's nothing wrong about change. Improvement is a good thing...so much better than stagnating. Don't be stuck in a rut and become way too bitter about life. Get some help if you need to.