OR/M acquires independent UK publisher Bloodhound Books

OR/M acquires independent UK publisher Bloodhound Books
on Jul 29, 2021

Bloodhound Books has the ability to get the best fiction to market and has sold over six million books worldwide with top 10 best-sellers across the UK, USA, Canada and Australia. With this acquisition, the independent publisher will bring a unique network to the OR/M community and independent, successful authors to the partner content program, which will help fuel growth of the company. OR/M powers a global eBook publisher network whose catalogue includes legendary authors such as William Styron, Alice Walker, Pat Conroy, Gloria Steinem, Octavia Butler, John Jakes, Pearl S Buck, Walker Percy, and Ruth Rendell. The global marketing technology company continues to put the best in digital technology and marketing at the heart of its discovery engine. Through strong marketing partnerships, digital library assets and catalogue of 11,000 titles, alongside its technology-enabled and data-informed approach, OR/M powers a community of more than 14,000 authors and over 3 million consumers with easy and instantaneous discovery for all of its content and books. Founded in 2014 by Betsy Reavley and Fred Freeman, Bloodhound was born from a love of fiction, and has since built its success off the back of its long-term relationships with authors. This acquisition is unique in that it brings two companies together who share a very similar vision of getting books into readers’ hands, and it will enable OR/M to continue to bring the very best content to its voracious, engaged reader community by adding new works and different perspectives from Bloodhound’s talented and diverse authors. “The acquisition of Bloodhound Books is demonstrative of the evolution of the publishing industry, and the opportunity for publishers and authors to align more directly with consumer interests and habits. OR/M is uniquely positioned to lead the publishing industry towards a better business model that leans into digital marketing and better leverages data-informed strategies,” says Paul Slavin, CEO at OR/M. “This acquisition is a huge positive, not only for shaping the future growth of Bloodhound, but also in helping to pave a better, more accessible digital path and discovery process for the publishing market as a whole.” Through this acquisition, Bloodhound authors gain a global reach, access to the US market, and wider distribution. In addition, OR/M’s marketing capabilities bring new, fresh opportunities to authors by putting them in front of potential readers across multiple markets, giving them a voice through the community, and by opening up new sales channels. OR/M’s data analysis capabilities provide highly actionable insights from Bloodhound first-party data, which can be used to help increase audiences available to our authors. “The market and consumer behavior have both changed dramatically in the past year,” says Betsy Reavley, Director, Bloodhound Books. “Our authors have been a real part of the Bloodhound family and have played a crucial role in the business’ success - in order to be able to give them the very best opportunities and to put their books into the hands of keen readers. We needed to find a way to expand the business from our audience reach to our marketing capabilities. We are extremely excited about joining the OR/M team, which will give us the opportunity to do just this - to provide the very best in content from our authors to a wide audience and to give them a community to collaborate and share their works going forward.” The Bloodhound editorial, production and commissioning teams will be integrated into OR/M’s existing company structure to work alongside its finance, distribution and marketing teams. OR/M recognises the strong value in the Bloodhound brand, and as such, it will be retained in all markets while Betsy Reavley and Fred Freeman will stay on board at OR/M to ensure all team and author community’s best interests are met. Book consumption stats are at an all-time high. Both Bloodhound Books and OR/M care about their authors and communities and this acquisition will enable the company to continue to help consumers discover great content. Source - Private Equity Wire