Penguin Random House in the context of Penguin Books

Random House is an imprint and publishing group of Penguin Random House. Founded in 1927 by businessmen Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer as an imprint of Modern Library, it quickly overtook Modern Library as the parent imprint. Over the following decades, a series of acquisitions made it into one of the largest publishers in the United States. In 2013, it was merged with Penguin Group to form Penguin Random House, which is owned by the Germany-based media conglomerate Bertelsmann. Penguin Random House uses its brand for Random House Publishing Group and Random House Children's Books, as well as several imprints.

Publishing is the process of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, comic books, newspapers, and magazines to the public. With the advent of digital information systems, the scope has expanded to include digital publishing such as e-books, digital magazines, websites, social media, music, and video game publishing.

The commercial publishing industry ranges from large multinational conglomerates such as News Corp, Pearson, Penguin Random House, and Thomson Reuters to major retail brands and thousands of small independent publishers. It has various divisions such as trade/retail publishing of fiction and non-fiction, educational publishing, and academic and scientific publishing. Publishing is also undertaken by governments, civil society, and private companies for administrative or compliance requirements, business, research, advocacy, or public interest objectives. This can include annual reports, research reports, market research, policy briefings, and technical reports. Self-publishing has become very common.

Doubleday is an American publishing company. It was founded as the Doubleday & McClure Company in 1897. By 1947, it was the largest book publisher in the United States. It published the work of mostly U.S. authors under a number of imprints and distributed them through its own stores.

In 2009, Doubleday merged with Knopf Publishing Group to form the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, which, as of 2018, is part of Penguin Random House.

The Boxcar Children is a children's book series originally created and written by American first-grade school teacher Gertrude Chandler Warner and currently published by Penguin Random House. It was previously published through Albert, Whitman and Company until 2023. Today, the series includes over 160 titles, with more being released every year. The series is aimed at readers in grades 2–6.

Originally published in 1924 by Rand McNally (as The Box-Car Children) and reissued in a shorter revised form in 1942 by Albert Whitman & Company, The Boxcar Children tells the story of four orphaned children: Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny Alden. They create a home for themselves in an abandoned boxcar in the forest. They eventually meet their paternal grandfather, who is a wealthy and kind man (although the children had believed him to be cruel since he did not like their mother). The children decide to live with him, who moves the beloved boxcar to his backyard so the children can use it as a playhouse. The book was adapted as a film of the same name in 2014 and the sequel novel Surprise Island was released as a film in 2018. Based on a 2007 online poll, the National Education Association listed the original book as one of its "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children". In 2012, the original novel was ranked among the all-time "Top 100 Chapter Books", or children's novels, in a survey published by School Library Journal.

Macmillan Publishers (Pan Macmillan in the UK and Macmillan Publishers in the US) is a British publishing company traditionally considered to be one of the "Big Five" English language publishers (along with Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster).

Founded in London in 1843 by Scottish brothers Daniel and Alexander Macmillan, the firm soon established itself as a leading publisher in Britain. It published two of the best-known works of Victorian-era children's literature, Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book (1894).

The direct market is the dominant distribution and retail network for American comic books. The concept of the direct market was created in the 1970s by Phil Seuling. The network currently consists of:

• three major comic distributors:
  • Diamond Comic Distributors, which distributes most, if not all, non-DC/Marvel/Image/IDW/Dark Horse comics (having exclusive deals with those publishers) and wholesales Marvel Comics, Image Comics, IDW Publishing, and Dark Horse Comics.
  • Lunar Distribution (which distributes DC Comics since 2020 and Image Comics since 2023);
  • Penguin Random House Publisher Services (the distribution arm of the publishing company), which since 1 October 2021 distributes Marvel Comics, since 1 June 2022 distributes IDW Publishing, and since 1 June 2023 distributes Dark Horse Comics; and
• the majority of comics specialty stores, and
• other retailers of comic books and related merchandise.

The name is no longer a fully accurate description of the model by which it operates, but derives from its original implementation: retailers bypassing existing distributors to make "direct" purchases from publishers. The defining characteristic of the direct market however is non-returnability: unlike book store and news stand distribution, which operate on a sale-or-return model, direct market distribution prohibits distributors and retailers from returning their unsold merchandise for refunds. In exchange for more favorable ordering terms, retailers and distributors must gamble that they can accurately predict their customers' demand for products. Each month's surplus inventory, meanwhile, could be archived and sold later, driving the development of an organized market for "back issues."

Penguin Group is a British trade book publisher and part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann. The new company was created by a merger that was finalised on 1 July 2013, with Bertelsmann initially owning 53% of the joint venture, and Pearson PLC initially owning the remaining 47%. Since 18 December 2019, Penguin Random House has been wholly owned by Bertelsmann.

Penguin Books has its registered office in the City of Westminster, London.

Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA, commonly known as Bertelsmann (German pronunciation: [ˈbɛʁtl̩sˌman] ), is a German private multinational conglomerate corporation based in Gütersloh, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is one of the world's largest media conglomerates and is also active in the service sector and education.

Bertelsmann was founded as a publishing house by Carl Bertelsmann in 1835. After World War II, Bertelsmann, under the leadership of Reinhard Mohn, went from being a medium-sized enterprise to a major conglomerate, offering not only books but also television, radio, music, magazines and services. Its principal divisions include the RTL Group, Penguin Random House, BMG, Arvato, the Bertelsmann Marketing Services, the Bertelsmann Education Group and Bertelsmann Investments.

HarperCollins Publishers LLC is a British - American multinational publishing conglomeratethat is considered to be one of the "Big Five" English-language publishers, along with Penguin Random House, Hachette, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster. HarperCollins is headquartered in London and New York City and is a subsidiary of News Corp.

The company's name is derived from a combination of the firm's predecessors. Harper & Brothers, founded in 1817 in New York, merged with Row, Peterson & Company in 1962 to form Harper & Row, which was acquired by News Corp in 1987. The Scottish publishing company William Collins, Sons, founded in 1819 in Glasgow, was acquired by News Corp in 1987 and merged with Harper & Row to form HarperCollins. The logo for the firm combines the fire from Harper's torch and the water from Collins' fountain.

The Associated Press Stylebook (generally called the AP Stylebook), alternatively titled The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law, is a style and usage guide for American English grammar created by American journalists working for or connected with the Associated Press journalism cooperative based in New York City. The Stylebook offers a basic reference to American English grammar, punctuation, and principles of reporting, including many definitions and rules for usage as well as styles for capitalization, abbreviation, spelling, and numerals.

The first publicly available edition of the book was published in 1953. The first modern edition was published in August 1977 by Lorenz Press. Afterwards, various paperback editions were published by different publishers, including, among others, Turtleback Books, Penguin's Laurel Press, Pearson's Addison-Wesley, and Hachette's Perseus Books and Basic Books. Recent editions are released in several formats, including paperback and flat-lying spiral-bound editions, as well as a digital e-book edition and an online subscription version. Additionally, the AP Stylebook also provides English grammar recommendations through social media, including Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram.

Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. (/knɒpf/) is an American publishing house that was founded by Blanche Knopf and Alfred A. Knopf Sr. in 1915. Blanche and Alfred traveled abroad regularly and were known for publishing European, Asian, and Latin American writers in addition to leading American literary trends. It was acquired by Random House in 1960, and is now part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group division of Penguin Random House which is owned by the German conglomerate Bertelsmann.

The Knopf publishing house is associated with the borzoi logo in its colophon, which was designed by co-founder Blanche Knopf in 1925.