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RANDOM HOUSE INC. shook the publishing industry last week when it broke up two venerable fifdoms, the Doubleday Publishing Group and Bantam Dell, and parceled out the pieces to its other divisions.
Meanwhile Simon & Schuster axed 35 jobs; other houses announced pay freezes and warned of layoffs.
And that's nothing compared with what could be in store.
If holiday book sales go as badly as some fear, the industry could be seriously refashioned, with some publishers getting gobbled up, many more jobs being cut and fewer titles on each house's lists. Celebrity books might become even more coveted by publishers desperate for hits; "smaller" books - anything with a projected first printing of 10,000 to 15,000 copies - would be shunned.