Following belt-tightening pension news last week, Random House rebounded this morning with a new strategy to digitize thousands of books–bringing John Updike, Harlan Coben, and countless other writers to an e-reader near you.
The company estimates that the expansion will take a few months, but it will increase the publisher’s ebook catalog from 8,000 books to 15,000 titles. As publishers shuffle into a grim holiday season, Random House is betting that digital books will flourish in a thrifty America. As the article explained:
“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.” (Via HuffPo)