In his annual letter to employees, Open Road Integrated Media CEO David Steinberger described “another year of record-setting growth” led by the company’s efforts to promote publishers’ backlist e-books.
In a period when promoting books to readers has become ever more challenging, publishers added more than 30,000 titles to Open Road’s Ignition program, which boosted the total number of titles to more than 100,000, Steinberger said.
The letter also noted that Open Road’s Activation program, which markets titles in every format and at every stage of a book’s lifecycle, had a solid year, running campaigns for such authors as Dan Brown, John Grisham, Janet Evanovich, Freida McFadden, and Ruth Ware.
Sales also grew for Open Road’s own publishing efforts, which released 300 new titles, and for Bloodhound, Open Road’s U.K.-based digital-first publisher. Open Road now as a catalog more than 11,000 of its own titles. Last year saw Open Road release its first audiobooks and it now has a total of 70 titles in the pipeline, Steinberger wrote. Open Road significantly boosted its number of company-owned titles earlier this year when it acquired RosettaBooks last month, a move that added more than 700 e-books to its catalog.
Steinberger wrote that he sees a bright future ahead for the company due in part to Open Road’s technology and its growing “first party audience,” of whom more than 40% read 50 or more books annually, across all genres and in all formats.
