HarperCollins president Brian Murray is taking over the duties of chief executive after Jane Friedman became the second publishing CEO to step down in recent weeks amid increasing pressure on the industry.

The publishing company owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. said Friedman's resignation Wednesday was effective immediately.

Friedman's departure follows the exit last month of Peter Olson, the chief executive of Random House, and stunned colleagues who had no idea it was coming. Olson held the job since 1998 but was hampered by losses at the unit of Germany's Bertelsmann AG amid a wider slowdown in book sales.

Friedman, who had headed proceedings at the company for a decade, had been instrumental in getting many prominent authors like Paulo Coelho, Michael Crichton and Doris Lessing on the rolls. She had also been an active torchbearer for the company's entry into the digital age, spearheading such initiatives as e-books and HarperTeen.

In order to both boost book sales and effectively reach the interactive community, HarperCollins offers online books for free . The entire book is not available to view, but potential buyers are able to browse books before they purchase (much like a traditional bookstore). HarperTeen is a page on MySpace that creates an interactive community for teenaged readers.

Additionally, she aggressively expanded in developing markets like India and China where the company's profits more than doubled during her tenure.

Friedman began overseeing HarperCollins' worldwide book publishing in 1997. Previously, she was an executive vice president at Random House Inc. and the Knopf Publishing Group. She was also publisher of Vintage Books and founder and president of Random House Audio Publishing.

She was in the news in 2006 when Regan, then publisher of Regan Books, a division of HarperCollins, decided to publish "If I Did It," O .J Simpson's hypothetical confession to the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Friedman had initially supported the idea only to back off under a huge public outcry. Regan was ultimately fired.

In a complaint filed in a $100 million defamation suit against HarperCollins and Friedman, Regan accused Friedman of being "responsible for the instigation and encouragement of a hostile work environment." The suit was settled, but it left some in the industry wondering how left Friedman bruised by the experience.

"My 10 years at HarperCollins have been far and away the most rewarding of my career and so it was not easy to make the decision to step down," said Friedman.

Her boss Rupert Murdoch was quite effusive in his praise for the departing executive. "We are enormously grateful for her contributions over the past 10 years and understand her desire to seek new challenges at this point in her career," he said.

New CEO Murray has been president of HarperCollins since July 2007. He joined the publisher 10 years earlier and held several positions in the General Books Group until 2001, when he was named CEO of HarperCollins Australia/New Zealand. Murray returned to HarperCollins in the US as group president in 2004 before his promotion to president.

"In his 11-year tenure, Brian has demonstrated an impressive track record of growing publishing companies," Murdoch said. HarperCollins said he has led the publisher's digital efforts, including the development of its direct-to-consumer marketing.

HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by Rupert murdoch's News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company. The company publishes under a number of names and had revenues in excess of £500 million last year.