Penguin Random House

In 1925 Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer bought The Modern Library, a reprint series of classics, from Horace Liveright. In 1927 they broadened the business into general publishing and introduced the Random House colophon. In the 1930s the company began publishing for children.⁠[1]

When they bought The Modern Library, Cerf was 27 and Klopfer 23. In 1934 Random House published the first authorized American edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses.⁠[2]

In 1934, on his way to London, Allen Lane found that the books on sale at Exeter St Davids station were of poor quality and overpriced; within a year he founded Penguin Books.⁠[2]

In 1935 Penguin Books launched low-priced, colour-coded paperbacks, with titles by Ernest Hemingway and Agatha Christie in the first batch. Penguin printed one million books within ten months, launched the Pelican non-fiction imprint in 1937, set up the Armed Forces Book Club in 1942 and started Penguin Classics in 1946.⁠[3]

Penguin was tried under the Obscene Publications Act over D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and was found not guilty in 1960. In 1988 it published Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, which caused controversy.⁠[2][3]

Allen Lane died in 1970, and that year Penguin was acquired by S. Pearson and Son Ltd, the predecessor of today’s Pearson plc. In 1985 Penguin acquired Michael Joseph and Hamish Hamilton. It launched its first website in 1995 and published its first ebooks in 2008.⁠[3]

In 1944 Random House established a company in Canada. It entered reference publishing in 1947 with the American College Dictionary and published an unabridged dictionary of the English language in 1966. It acquired Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. in 1960 and Pantheon Books in 1961.⁠[1]

RCA acquired Random House in 1965, and Advance Publications, Inc. acquired it in 1980. The company kept expanding: it acquired Ballantine Books in 1973 and Fawcett Books in 1982, created the hardcover imprint Villard Books in 1983, bought Times Books from The New York Times Company in 1984, acquired Fodor’s Travel Guides in 1986, The Crown Publishing Group in 1988 and the trade division of Reed Books in 1997.⁠[1]

Random House expanded into the United Kingdom in 1987 by acquiring Chatto, Virago, Bodley Head & Jonathan Cape, Ltd., and acquired Century Hutchinson Ltd. in 1989.⁠[1]

On March 23, 1998, the German media group Bertelsmann AG announced that it would buy Random House from its holding company, Advance Publications Inc. The companies did not disclose the price; the deal needed regulatory approval and was expected to close by mid-year. Bertelsmann would combine its U.S. book operations with Random House, and the combined company would keep the Random House name and the publishing divisions and imprints of both sides. Bertelsmann’s U.S. book business, the Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, had been formed after it acquired Doubleday in December 1986. Random House then had annual revenue of about $1 billion, and the combined company was estimated at $1.38 billion to $1.67 billion.⁠[4]

Bertelsmann chairman and chief executive Mark Woessner called book publishing the “heritage and very foundation” of the company’s media business and said, “We believe trade book publishing has a strong and promising future.”⁠[4]

Bertelsmann completed the acquisition in 1998 and merged its Canadian and UK operations into the local Random House operations; in the United Kingdom, Random House UK merged with Transworld.⁠[1][3]

Bertelsmann and Pearson announced on October 29, 2012, that they would combine their trade publishers Random House and Penguin. The U.S. Department of Justice and the authorities in Australia, New Zealand, the European Commission, Canada, South Africa and China approved the deal without conditions. The final contracts were signed on the closing date, and Penguin Random House was established on July 1, 2013.⁠[5][6]

After the merger Bertelsmann held 53 percent and Pearson 47 percent; Bertelsmann appointed five directors and Pearson four. Markus Dohle, formerly chairman and CEO of Random House, became chief executive, and John Makinson, who had headed Penguin Group since 2002, became chairman. The privately held company, headquartered in New York, had almost 250 imprints, more than 10,000 employees and annual revenue of about €3 billion ($3.9 billion), with publishing operations in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, India, Spain, Latin America, parts of Asia and South Africa. The German-language Verlagsgruppe Random House stayed outside the merger and remained with Bertelsmann.⁠[5]

Penguin UK describes the merger as forming “the world’s first truly global book publishing company.”⁠[3]

On July 11, 2017, Bertelsmann announced that it would acquire a further 22 percent of Penguin Random House from Pearson, raising its stake from 53 to 75 percent, with Pearson keeping 25 percent. The transaction valued Penguin Random House at an enterprise value of $3.55 billion and was subject to regulatory approval. Bertelsmann gained stronger governance rights, including the right to appoint the board chairman; Markus Dohle remained chief executive, and Verlagsgruppe Random House in Germany stayed fully controlled by Bertelsmann.⁠[7]

On March 31, 2020, Bertelsmann completed its purchase of the remaining 25 percent of Penguin Random House from Pearson for about $675 million, becoming the sole owner. Penguin Random House then had around 320 book publishing imprints. Bertelsmann chairman and CEO Thomas Rabe said the completion “has a historic dimension for Bertelsmann” and that “Books in all formats have a bright future.”⁠[8]

On November 25, 2020, ViacomCBS announced that it would sell Simon & Schuster to Penguin Random House LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Bertelsmann, for $2.175 billion in cash after a competitive global auction. The deal was expected to close in 2021, subject to regulatory approval. Simon & Schuster was to operate as a separate unit within Penguin Random House, still led by its president and CEO, Jonathan Karp.⁠[9]

On November 2, 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice sued to block the acquisition, arguing that it would give Penguin Random House “outsized influence” over what is published and how much authors are paid. Simon & Schuster chief executive Jonathan Karp said the two companies “strongly disagree with the DOJ that this transaction will harm competition.”⁠[10]

The Justice Department sued under Section 7 of the Clayton Act in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and the case went to a thirteen-day trial in August 2022. The government argued that the merged company would dominate the market for books with advances of $250,000 or more, reducing advances and the number of releases; the author Stephen King testified for the government.⁠[11][12]

On October 31, 2022, Judge Florence Y. Pan ruled the deal illegal, finding that the Justice Department had shown it could substantially reduce competition “in the market for the U.S. publishing rights to anticipated top-selling books.” On November 1, 2022, the Justice Department announced that it had obtained a permanent injunction blocking the acquisition; Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter called the decision “a victory for authors, readers, and the free exchange of ideas.” Penguin Random House called the ruling a setback for readers and authors and said it would seek an expedited appeal.⁠[13][11][12]

Bertelsmann initially said it would appeal but failed to persuade Paramount Global, Simon & Schuster’s parent, to extend the agreement and pursue an appeal, and the deal was abandoned, with Penguin Random House owing Paramount Global a $200 million termination fee. Penguin Random House said it “will advance the growth of its global book publishing business” without the merger.⁠[13]

On December 9, 2022, Markus Dohle announced that he would step down as chief executive of Penguin Random House at the end of the year and, at his own request, leave Bertelsmann’s executive board, on which he had served for nearly 15 years; his contract had been due to run until December 2025. Dohle had become CEO when the company was still Random House and led it through the 2012–13 merger with Penguin. He said that after the U.S. antitrust decision against the Simon & Schuster merger he had chosen to hand the company’s next chapter to new leadership. Nihar Malaviya, the company’s president and chief operating officer, became interim CEO.⁠[14]

On May 17, 2023, Penguin Random House, the free-expression group PEN America and several authors and parents filed a federal lawsuit against the Escambia County School District in Florida and its school board, alleging that removing and restricting books about racism and with LGBTQ themes violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments, and asking for the books to be returned to school libraries.⁠[15]

An amended complaint on July 21, 2023, added five parents as plaintiffs. In January 2024 U.S. District Judge Kent Wetherell ruled that the plaintiffs had standing under the First Amendment and that the case could proceed.⁠[16]

On November 30, 2023, Penguin Random House, the Iowa State Education Association, authors, educators, a student and a parent sued Iowa over SF 496, a law enacted in May 2023 that bars books depicting sex, gender identity or sexual orientation from public school libraries. In December 2023 federal judge Stephen Locher blocked the ban on sexual content, calling the law “overly broad” and likely in violation of the First Amendment; Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster and Sourcebooks joined the case in April 2024. In August 2024 the Eighth Circuit rejected Iowa’s argument that library curation is government speech and sent the case back to the lower court.⁠[16]

In August 2024 Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster, Sourcebooks, the Authors Guild and several authors, students and parents sued Florida officials over the book-removal provisions of HB 1069, a law restricting school library books. Penguin Random House also filed amicus briefs on June 2, 2023, in a case over book removals from the Llano County library system in Texas, and in August 2023 in a case over curriculum restrictions in California’s Temecula Valley Unified School District.⁠[16]

In June 2023 the Chinese digital reading company iReader Technology reached a cooperation agreement with Penguin Random House to bring in original English-language ebooks on an ongoing basis.⁠[17]

In October 2024 Penguin Random House said it would update the copyright pages of all its books with language stating that “No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems,” and that, “In accordance with Article 4(3) of the Digital Single Market Directive 2019/790,” it expressly reserved the work from the text and data mining exception.⁠[18]

In 2025 Penguin Random House had revenue of €4.981 billion, up 1.3 percent from €4.917 billion in 2024, and adjusted operating EBITDA of €704 million, down 4.7 percent from €739 million. In June 2025 it acquired all of Aardvark Topco Limited, the parent company of the British publisher Wonderbly. It developed BookBoost, a data-driven marketing platform, and in-house machine-learning tools for demand forecasting, print runs, ordering and pricing, and invested in highly automated distribution centres in Spain and Australia.⁠[19]

Organic revenue growth in 2025 was 3.3 percent, and Penguin Random House gained market share in most of its markets, including the U.S., mainly on the strength of bestsellers such as Mel Robbins’s The Let Them Theory, Dan Brown’s The Secret of Secrets, Virginia Evans’s The Correspondent and James Clear’s Atomic Habits; it also took books tied to KPop Demon Hunters from idea to shelf in three months. Earnings fell “mainly due to growth-related expenses in the U.S. core business, along with negative exchange rate effects.” Nihar Malaviya said, “We had a solid year, growing revenues in a mixed marketplace.”⁠[20]

In the first quarter of 2026, For the Fans! by Angela Song, tied to KPop Demon Hunters, sold 1.6 million copies across the U.S., U.K., Canada, Germany and Spain, and Virginia Evans’s The Correspondent sold more than 1.5 million copies in the U.S., U.K. and Australia; film adaptations of Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights also lifted sales.⁠[21]

On July 28, 2026, Dutton, a Penguin Random House imprint, published Annie JacobsenAnnie JacobsenAnnie Jacobsen is an American investigative journalist, nonfiction author, and television writer and producer who has long written about secret programs in US national security, military research, and intelligence agencies. Her books include Area 51, Operation Paperclip, Nuclear War: A Scenario, and Biological War: A Scenario, and The Pentagon’s Brain was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History.Open the full entry’s Biological War: A ScenarioBiological War: A ScenarioBiological War: A Scenario is a nonfiction book by American author and investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen, published in the United States by Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Random House. The book imagines a biological war scenario and traces the societal collapse that could follow in the hours, days, and weeks after the event; it is the author’s next “scenario” book after Nuclear War: A Scenario.Open the full entry in hardcover, at 432 pages.⁠[22][23]

In the first half of 2026 Penguin Random House’s revenue rose 2.3 percent to €2.376 billion, while EBITDA fell 1.6 percent to €251 million; Nihar Malaviya attributed the slightly lower profitability mainly to higher costs and currency effects. He said the company’s publishers “outperformed their markets” worldwide and that “AI is impacting every industry, including ours.”⁠[24]

Penguin Random House is owned by Bertelsmann, is headquartered in New York City and operates in more than 20 countries on six continents, with more than 300 editorially and creatively independent imprints and brands publishing adult and children’s fiction and nonfiction. It has more than 10,000 employees worldwide, more than 5,000 of them in North America, publishes about 70,000 digital and 15,000 print titles a year, has more than 100,000 ebooks available worldwide and counts more than 80 Nobel laureates among its authors.⁠[6]

Bertelsmann’s 2025 annual report lists more than 350 publishing houses and imprints on six continents and about 14,500 new titles a year. The group’s oldest continuously operating imprint is Chatto & Windus, founded in 1855.⁠[19][3]

In the United States, its publishing groups include Penguin Publishing Group (with Dutton, Viking, Penguin Press, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, Riverhead, Berkley, Penguin Classics and others), Random House Publishing Group (Random House, Ballantine Books, Bantam, Del Rey, Modern Library, Hogarth and others), Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group (Alfred A. Knopf, Doubleday, Pantheon Books, Vintage Books, Anchor Books, Everyman’s Library and others), Crown Publishing Group (Crown Trade, Clarkson Potter, Ten Speed Press and others), Random House Children’s Books, Penguin Young Readers Group, DK, Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group and Penguin Random House Christian Publishing Group.⁠[25]

Nihar Malaviya is chief executive officer, with both global and U.S. responsibility, and Manuel Sansigre is chief financial officer. The heads of the publishing groups include Sanyu Dillon, president of Random House Publishing Group; Allison Dobson, president of Penguin Publishing Group; David Drake, president of Crown Publishing Group; and Maya Mavjee, president and publisher of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.⁠[26]