Random House



Random House is an American book publisher, the largest general-interest in the world. As of 2013, it is part of Penguin Random House, which is jointly owned by German media conglomerate Bertelsmann and British global education and publishing company Pearson PLC.

The publisher's headquarters are located in the United States at 1745 Broadway in Manhattan, in the 684-foot Random House Tower, completed in 2009 and spanning the entire west side of the block between West 55th Street and West 56th. Its lobby showcases floor-to-ceiling glassed-in bookcases filled with books published by the company's many imprints.

History
Random House was founded in 1925 by Americans Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer, two years after they acquired the Modern Library imprint from publisher Horace Liveright, which reprints classic works of literature. Cerf is quoted as saying, "We just said we were going to publish a few books on the side at random," which suggested the name Random House.

In 1998, Bertelsmann AG bought Random House and merged it with Bantam Doubleday Dell and it soon went global. In October 2012, Bertelsmann entered into talks with rival conglomerate, over the possibility of combining their respective publishing companies, Random House and Penguin Group. The merger was completed on July 1, 2013 and the new company became Penguin Random House. The move to consolidate was to provide leverage against Amazon.com and battle the shrinking state of bookstores.