Bantam Books

Bantam Books is an American publishing house owned entirely by parent company Random House, a subsidiary of Penguin Random House; it is an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group. It was formed in 1945 by Walter B. Pitkin Jr., Sidney B. Kramer, and Ian and Betty Ballantine, with funding from Grosset & Dunlap and Curtis Publishing Company. It has since been purchased several times by companies including National General, Carl Lindner's American Financial and, most recently, Bertelsmann; it became part of Random House in 1998, when Bertelsmann purchased it to form Bantam Doubleday Dell. It began as a mass market publisher, mostly of reprints of hardcover books, with some original paperbacks as well. It expanded into both trade paperback and hardcover books, including original works, often reprinted in house as mass-market editions.
History
The company was failing when Oscar Dystel, who had previously worked at Esquire and as editor on Coronet magazine was hired in 1954 to manage it. By the end of the next year the company was profitable. Dystel retired as chairman in 1980. By that time Bantam was the largest publisher of paperbacks, had over 15% of the market, and exceeded 100 million in sales.
In 1964, Grosset & Dunlap acquired full ownership of Bantam from Curtis. In 1968, Grosset & Dunlap was acquired by conglomerate National General, run by Gene Klein. National General was acquired by American Financial Group in 1973. American Financial sold Bantam to the Italian firm IFI in 1974. Bertelsmann acquired half of Bantam in 1977 and assumed full ownership in 1980. IN 1986, Bantam began publishing audiobooks. In 1986, Bertelsmann acquired Doubleday & Company and created the holding Bantam Doubleday Dell. In 1998, Bertelsmann acquired Random House from Advance Publications; Random House became the name of the holding company. After the merger, Bantam was merged with Dell Publishing. Bantam Dell became part of the Random House publishing group in 2008. Ballantine Books was merged with Bantam Dell in 2010. In 2013, Random House merged with Penguin to form Penguin Random House.
Books published
Bantam has published the entire original run of the "Choose Your Own Adventure" series of children's books, as well as the first original novels based upon the Star Trek franchise, publishing about a dozen such books between 1970 and 1982, when the license was taken over by Pocket Books. Bantam also published a dozen volumes of short story adaptations of scripts from Star Trek: The Original Series. Bantam was the former American paperback publisher of The Guinness Book of Records. Another series was "Bantam War Book" from the 1970s to the 1990s, with the majority of books from World War II, but also from Vietnam, Korea and other conflicts.
Other series include Bantam Classics, the Bantam Spectra science fiction imprint, the juvenile Skylark imprint, and editions of Shakespeare.
Bantam Classics
The series was started in 1958. It reprints mostly public domain, unabridged classic books, intended to increase backlist sales and reintroduce the works to new audiences. More than a hundred books have been released in the series.
Like competing editions, some Bantam Classics are printed with an introduction from a literary critic, and in the case of Moby Dick, with a selection of critical essays on the novel appended as well.
Authors
Authors originally published exclusively or significantly by Bantam include:
Maya Angelou
Isaac Asimov
Jean Auel
Louis L'Amour
Ray Bradbury
Ernest Callenbach
Alan Campbell
Philip K. Dick
S. S. Van Dine
James Dobson
Stephen R. Donaldson
Ian Fleming
Frederick Forsyth
Lisa Gardner
Richard Dawkins
David Gemmell
Elizabeth George
William Gibson
John Glenn
Daniel Goleman
Graham Greene
John Grisham
Laurell K. Hamilton
Thomas Harris
Stephen Hawking
Mo Hayder
Hermann Hesse
Tracy Hickman
Tami Hoag
Robin Hobb
Kay Hooper
Iris Johansen
Shmuel Katz
Dean Koontz
Emilie Loring
Lois Lowry
Robert Ludlum
Duncan Lunan
William March
Shirley MacLaine
George R. R. Martin
Malachi Martin
Anne McCaffrey
Andy McDermott
Terence McKenna
Farley Mowat
Joseph Murphy
Michael Palmer
Robert M. Pirsig
Daniel Quinn
Tom Robbins
Jane Roberts
Alan Rodgers
J.D. Salinger
Alice Schroeder
H. Norman Schwarzkopf
Jerry Seinfeld
Adam Smith
Lori Nelson Spielman
John Steinbeck
Danielle Steel
Neal Stephenson
Bruce Sterling
Rex Stout
William Tenn
Margaret Weis
Elie Wiesel
Victor Villasenor
Books originally published by Bantam
See also
Rafael Palacios, early book jacket artist at Bantam
References
External links
Book publishing companies based in New York (state)
Publishing companies based in New York City
Publishing companies established in 1945
1945 establishments in New York (state)
Random House