Playboy Enterprises and Steerforth Press have formed Playboy Press, a joint venture for which Playboy will provide editorial and art direction, drawing largely on material from Playboy magazine, while Steerforth will handle marketing as well as sales and distribution in conjunction with Random House, which distributes Steerforth.

Chip Fleischer, publisher of Steerforth, Hanover, N.H., explained the coupling this way: "Working with the editors at Playboy on a couple of previous projects, we discovered there was a strong affinity between Steerforth's list and Playboy's editorial content--true crime, military, politics, sports, literary fiction--and that we enjoyed working together." He added that "the beauty of this deal is it allows Playboy Press to bring titles to market when, from time to time, Playboy has the makings of a good book. But there is no new overhead for either party pressuring us to get out a certain number of titles each year."

He also emphasized the "impressive" content of the magazine, noting that Playboy founder Hugh Hefner once told a reunion of Playboy Playmates, "Without you, I'd have a literary magazine."

From 1954 until 1982, Playboy had a Playboy Press subsidiary, but sold it. Since then, titles with the Playboy logo have been published by various houses.

The first three titles of the reconstituted Playboy Press will be unveiled in September: The New Bedside Playboy edited by Hefner; Dear Playboy Advisor, featuring 800 items from the popular magazine column (the last time this kind of material was collected, in the 1990s, the paperback sold more than 100,000 copies); and Sexual Pensées, a new illustrated title by Bruce Jay Friedman, "a blend of poetic aphorism and erotic memoir," that will be excerpted in the magazine in October.