US-based publisher RR Donnelley has bought LibreDigital, an online bookstore previously backed by US-based publishing company HarperCollins Publishers and US-based newspaper group The New York Times Company, for an undisclosed amount.
In January, LibreDigital raised $4m from undisclosed investors. This followed it raising $8.1m in third-round funding in May 2010.
The series C round was led by venture capital firms S3 Ventures, as a new investor, and repeat VC backers Adams Capital Management and Triangle Peak Partners. Previous investors have included HarperCollins Publishers, The New York Times Company and Noro-Moseley Partners.
Press reports said LibreDigital was founded in 1999 as NewsStand to provide digital copies of newspapers, and raised about $70m from Adams Capital, the New York Times and others before relaunching in 2006 to focus on the electronic book publishing market, and has since raised $31.1m.
LibreDigital takes books and converts them into the ePub format technology company Apple uses in its iBookstore as well as for the Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, Sony Reader and Google. This year Apple chose LibreDigital to supply digital content, including books, magazines and newspapers, for the iPad tablet computer. Apple uses the ePub format, while Amazon has its own proprietary format, .AZW.
LibreDigital works with six of the top 10 US book publishers, including HarperCollins Publishers, Hachette Book Group, Kaplan Publishing, Simon & Schuster and Scholastic.