Random House Confirms Additional Layoffs

By Hillel Italie

NEW YORK -- Spokesmen for two newly formed divisions of Random House Inc. said there have been layoffs as the publishing giant continued its consolidation announced last December.

The Crown Publishing Group, where authors include President-elect Barack Obama, and the Knopf Doubleday Group, which publishes Toni Morrison and Anne Rice among others, separately announced on Wednesday a wave of promotions and personnel changes and confirmed that some employees had been cut.

Spokesmen Paul Bogaards of Knopf and David Drake of Crown each said there had been a small number of layoffs across various departments, following reductions at Random House announced last fall and at the end of last year, not long after the publisher merged its divisions from five into three. Random House has also frozen pensions for current employees and eliminated them for future hires.

Neither Bogaards nor Drake would offer specific numbers on how many had been let go, although both said no further cuts were planned.

Several publishers have announced layoffs and/or wage freezes in the past two months, including Macmillan, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster.