Random House Expands Ebook Offerings
Posted on November 24, 2008
Random House has announced plans to expand its ebook library.
Random House has announced plans to add 6,000 backlist titles to its current e-book library. With these additions, Random House will have nearly 15,000 titles available in the digital format. (The house, which is the biggest trade publisher in the world, is already one of the largest e-book publishers.) Random will also, for the first time, make its entire catalog of both new and existing titles, available in the emerging standard format for the industry, e-Pub.The digital movement has been much slower than many in the industry expected. But with the advent of the Kindle and the Sony ebook reader, finally ebooks are starting to take off.Among the titles being digitzed, which include those from the children's and adult divisions, are books by Philip K. Dick, Harlan Coben, Louis L'Amour, John Updike, Mary Pope Osborne and Barbara Park. Markus Dohle, chairman and CEO of Random, said the publisher is "making significant investments in the digital future" with moves such as this one.
Now if they could just solve the lithium ion battery life problem, we'd be all set. We are so tired of lining up all our devices at night to charge them up for the next day. Cell phone, laptop, blackberry -- it's like a little row of electronic soldiers getting rested for the day ahead. We want portable batteries that last for a month at a time. Or more.