| Parent company | Random House |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1945 |
| Founder | Walter B. Pitkin, Jr., Sidney B. Kramer, Ian Ballantine and Betty Ballantine |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | New York City |
| Official website | bantam-dell.atrandom.com |
Bantam Books is an American publishing house owned entirely by Random House, the German media corporation subsidiary of Bertelsmann; 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. It has since been purchased several times by companies including National General and, most recently, Random House.
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 (aimed at adults) based upon the Star Trek franchise, publishing about a dozen such books between 1970 and 1982 when the licence 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 is the American paperback publisher of The Guinness Book of Records.
In their Bantam Classics Series, they offer a wide range of classic books (e.g. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Candide by Voltaire or Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne) from all kinds of different authors and themes.
Bantam has published a diverse range of authors, including: