Ballantine Books

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Ballantine Books, founded in 1952 by Ian Ballantine, is a major American book publisher. It was acquired by Random House in 1973 and remains part of that company today. Ballantine's logo is a pair of mirrored letter "B"'s back to back (similar to the center of the ABBA logo).

The first Ballantine Book was Cameron Hawley's Executive Suite, published in 1952 and filmed by Robert Wise as a 1954 MGM film.

During the early 1950s, Ballantine attracted attention as one of the leading publishers of paperback science fiction and fantasy. In the early 1960s the company engaged in a well-known rivalry with Ace Books for the rights to reprint the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and Edgar Rice Burroughs in paperback form. Ballantine prevailed in the struggle for the Tolkien work, with their editions of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy including a message on the back cover from Tolkien himself urging consumers to buy Ballantine's version and boycott "unauthorized editions" (i.e. the version from Ace Books). A separate Canadian edition of the books was also published, with different front cover art work, though Tolkien still asked for (and received) permission to add a message to the back cover of the Canadian editions expressing his support for them.

In 1969 Ballantine launched the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series under the editorship of Lin Carter, which brought a number of rare titles back into print, as well as launching Katherine Kurtz's Deryni series.

In 1977 Ballantine set up Del Rey Books as a science fiction and fantasy imprint under the editorship of Lester del Rey and his wife Judy-Lynn. This may have been a response to rival Donald A. Wollheim's launch of specialist science fiction publisher DAW Books.

Del Rey/Lucas Books has published novelizations of all six Star Wars films, as well as numerous "bridge" novels, prequels and sequels to the films.

Ballantine's 3000-title backlist includes titles from several imprints. Fawcett, now home to Ballantine's mysteries, was acquired in 1982. In 1987, Ivy was launched and now features Ballantine's romance novels. One World was founded in 1991 as a publisher of multicultural books, and Wellspring has published spiritual guidance and inspiration since 1999.

Ian and Betty Ballantine also founded Rufus Publications.