RBmedia has bought self-publishing audiobook specialist Author’s Republic a month after RB owner KKR sold off Audiobooks.com to Storytel for $135 million.
Darren Speers, General Manager of Author’s Republic, says, ‘As the only independent, truly open, self-published audiobooks marketplace, we are thrilled to combine forces with RBmedia to ensure all content creators can get their audiobooks on to more platforms and in front of more listeners in the easiest way possible.’
Author’s Republic offers an extensive audiobook distribution portal delivering audiobooks to a wide network of retail channels and libraries and aggregates all author royalties to a single centralized dashboard.
RBmedia, which claims to be the biggest audiobook producer in the world, and Author’s Republic will provide audiobook creation tools, a narrator marketplace, and other features to enable self-published authors to produce and distribute their audiobooks.
Tom MacIsaac, CEO of RBmedia, says, ‘Self-published authors should be able to get their books on to every platform, worldwide under the best terms. Author’s Republic is the only independent marketplace for self-published authors and the only platform that can deliver on that promise.’
Author’s Republic will be run independently, as a sister company to RBmedia, by its existing team based in Toronto. As part of the deal, RBmedia also acquired Novel Audio, a small audiobook publishing imprint operated by the Author’s Republic team.
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