The world’s biggest publisher may be about to go head to head with the company that calls itself the world’s biggest retailer and the company that calls itself the worlds biggest bookseller: Random House CEO Peter Olson says the company is thinking of selling its books directly to customers online, “in competition with Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble,” as a New York Daily News report by Paul D. Colford observes. The announcement was made breifly and with little detail in Olson’s year-end letter to employees, and Colford says it could be a response to the ongoing and intensifying “role reversal at Barnes & Noble, which publishes more and more books under its own name. B&N has released literary classics, histories and novelty books, vying with traditional publishers for reader dollars.” Spokesman Stuart Applebaum, meanwhile, says plans are not immediate, but “The key thing is we’re not ruling it out.”