Random House /

Random House, Inc. is a large English-language general trade book publisher. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films, and is currently developing a division responsible for creating story content for media including video games, social networks on the web, mobile platforms, in print and on film. Random House was founded in 1927 by Americans Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer, two years after they acquired the Modern Library imprint. 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. Its American divisions currently include the Crown Publishing Group, the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, the Random House Audio Publishing Group, the Random House Publishing Group, and Random House Children's Books. Del Rey Manga publishes English manga in North America. Random House entered reference publishing in 1947 with the American College Dictionary, which was followed in 1966 by its first unabridged dictionary. Today it publishes the