Random House Buys Multnomah

by Jim Milliot, Religion BookLine -- Publishers Weekly, 8/9/2006

Random House made it official August 3 when it announced the acquisition of the Christian book publisher Multnomah Publishers. Multnomah founder Don Jacobson had announced earlier last month that he had reached a deal to sell his company and, as reported in the July 12 edition of both RBL, Random was believed to be the buyer.

Random will integrate Multnomah’s Oregon operations with that of its existing Christian division WaterBrook Press, based in Colorado Springs. Steve Cobb, who had worked at Multnomah for several years before founding WaterBrook in 1996, will oversee the combined division, which will be called WaterBrook Multnomah.

The integration process is expected to take 12 months and some Multnomah employees, particularly on the editorial and marketing side, may move to Colorado. The Multnomah name will be retained as a separate imprint and will continue to publish about 100 new titles annually. The purchase doubles the size of WaterBrook’s list, adding 600 titles to its existing base of 500.

Among Multnomah’s authors are Randy Alcorn, Shaunti Feldhahn, Robin Jones Gunn and Andy Stanley. Its biggest hit was Bruce Wilkinson’s The Prayer of Jabez, released in 2001.