With the deal, Open Road will add RosettaBooks’ catalog of more than 700 classic books to its list.

By Andrew Richard Albanese, Editor-in-Chief

Open Road Integrated Media announced this week that is has acquired RosettaBooks (RB Content LLC) from private equity firm MEP Capital. Financial terms were not released, although the release notes that MEP Capital is also a minority investor in Open Road.

The deal brings together two of the industry’s pioneering digital publishers and former competitors. RosettaBooks was founded by literary agent Arthur Klebanoff in 2001 with the vision of publishing electronic versions of classic backlist works. Klebanoff’s move led to a lawsuit over the digital rights to several works filed by publisher Random House in 2001, which the parties settled in 2002 by striking a licensing deal.

Open Road was founded in 2009, led by industry veteran and former HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman, with a similar vision of publishing digital editions of classic works combined with a savvy digital marketing enterprise to boost discovery and sales. In addition to its publishing list, Open Road is now considered the one of industry’s top digital marketing services providers—with RosettaBooks among its clients. In 2023, Open Road launched the Re-Discovery Lit initiative, which works to republish books that had gone out of print or whose rights had been reverted to their authors.

The deal will add RosettaBooks’ catalog of more than 700 classic books to Open Road’s list, including Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer, and I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. “We are deeply gratified to be bringing Rosetta’s iconic collection of titles to Open Road’s catalog,” said David Steinberger, Open Road’s CEO, in a statement. “This is a list of truly astonishing quality.”

Under the deal, Klebanoff, Rosetta’s Founding Publisher, will continue in his current role as “consultant, advisor, and the point of contact for Rosetta authors and agents,” and will “collaborate” with Open Road SVP and Publisher Christine Gillespie.

“I look forward to continuing as the steward of Rosetta’s titles,” Klebanoff said, in a release, calling Open Road “the ideal home for our authors and their works.”

“As long-time admirers of the Rosetta list, we are thrilled to be welcoming RosettaBooks to the Open Road publishing family,” said Gillespie. “I look forward to working more closely with Arthur to grow sales and build on the great legacy of these books through our innovative marketing platform.”