Monday, July 31st, Random House, a Bertelsmann AG company, announced AtRandom a new electronic publishing imprint that will offer a complete editorial list of original electronic books, commissioned expressly for the electronic publishing format. This imprint will publish new fiction and nonfiction.

AtRandom’s first list of books will be comprised of twenty titles to be published beginning in January 2001 and will cover a diverse and "random" variety of genres and categories: business, literary fiction, humor, psychology, technology, popular culture, sports, current events, biography and memoirs. They are being written by such authors 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," Ann Godoff, Editor-in-chief of the Random House Trade Group said.

Random House also separately announced the establishment of Modern Library e-books, which will publish one hundred works of classic literature from their bound book backlist in electronic form. Modern Library is an imprint of the Random House Trade Group.

The AtRandom and Modern Library 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.

These initiatives mark the first extended entries into the creation of original content for digital platforms by any of the publishing divisions of Random House, Inc., the world’s largest English-language trade publisher.

Posted August 1, 2000