Japanese eCommerce giant Rakuten is to pay US$410 million in cash to buy OverDrive, a leading eBook and audiobook content marketplace and sharing economy pioneer.
Cleveland, US-based OverDrive was founded in 1986 and supplies the world’s largest catalog of eBooks, audiobooks, music and streaming video to 30,000 libraries, schools and retailers around the globe.
“OverDrive’s deep content library and relationships with publishers, libraries, schools, and retailers will allow Rakuten to extend our mission of empowerment to new market segments and accelerate the growth of our digital contents businesses,” said Takahito Aiki, head of Rakuten’s global eBook business.
“OverDrive is a widely-respected pioneer in digital content and the sharing economy. Long before even Kobo emerged onto the global stage, OverDrive had already seen the future and was working with publishers to digitise their content to share with the world, building one of the most comprehensive online digital marketplaces in the process,” he said.
“OverDrive’s deep content library and relationships with publishers, libraries, schools, and retailers will allow Rakuten to extend our mission of empowerment to new market segments and accelerate the growth of our digital contents businesses.”
With the top rated eBook & audiobook app for libraries and schools and OverDrive Read, the ePub and HTML5 browser-based reading experience, OverDrive supports all major computers and devices, including iOS, Android and Kindle (in the US only). OverDrive delivers all digital media on a single platform, and offers APIs to streamline a seamless user experience. Recent innovations include in-library touchscreen stations for browsing and instant sampling, multi-lingual user interface, and eReading Rooms for kids and teens..
OverDrive Founder and CEO, Steve Potash, said Rakuten’s vision of empowerment is perfectly aligned with OverDrive.
“Since 1986, our vision has been to advance digital publishing and content to connect readers with books and information. We’re passionate about working with publishers, libraries, schools and retailers… and we are very excited to join an innovative company that shares and supports our vision.”
As Rakuten expands its global Internet services ecosystem, digital content represents one of Rakuten’s three key strategic pillars, alongside eCommerce and finance. Since first acquiring eReading company Kobo in 2012, Rakuten has continued to grow its digital contents businesses, adding video streaming service Wuaki.tv in 2012 and global TV and video site Viki in 2013. The acquisition of OverDrive adds a digital distribution platform, more than 2.5 million titles, and relationships with 5000 publishers and 30,000 libraries that will strengthen Rakuten’s eBook and digital contents businesses globally.
OverDrive returned a pre-tax profit of US$25 million in 2014. With the addition of OverDrive, Rakuten expects its global eBook business will come close to breaking even in 2015.
The deal will close in April.
