Unlocking the potential of
a digitally connected audience

Our core capability is producing scalable sales that deliver multi-year recurring revenue, and proprietary technology that has become a SAAS service for our partners.

Annual CEO Letter

January 24, 2024

CEO David Steinberger’s comments on Open Road’s transformational 2023 highlight growth, an expanding range of client publishers, and advances in data, technology and machine learning, and more.

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The Problem

Only a very small percentage of the millions of books in publication are discoverable. Authors need to connect with readers. Consumers want books they’ll love.

The Solution

Content discoverability and scales using scalable marketing and proprietary tech tools.

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Total Addressable Market

205M Adults in the US

About three-quarters (74%) of Americans have read a book in the past 12 months, a figure that has remained largely unchanged since 2012. (Pew Research Center)

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$25.93B US Book Market

In 2019 total book revenue in the US was $25.93B; $16.23B were trade sales and $8.22B were purchased through online retail. There are over 17M books in the market and self-publishing alone contributed to 1.68M new books released in 2018.

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We’ve partnered with…

What our publishing partners are saying

Our partnership with Open Road has dramatically increased the sales of a wide range of our backlist titles. The increased revenue for both Grove and the authors is great—but even more exciting is that this initiative is helping introduce these worthy books to new readers.

Morgan Entrekin

CEO and Publisher of Grove Atlantic

Open Road’s technology has helped find new audiences for our backlist titles and the resulting sales increases and incremental revenue generation have been significant.

Michael Jacobs
President and CEO, Harry N. Abrams

We have been really pleased with our partnership with Open Road. They have achieved sustained sales increases on a curated list of our deep backlist titles (with no out-of-pocket costs for us), helped ensure that our metadata for these titles is up to snuff,  and we and our authors are very grateful.

Ellen Adler
Publisher, The New Press
PW’s Publisher of the Year 2021

Working with the team at Open Road provides a second group of experts at your fingertips to help maximize the sales on your backlist titles. Whether the book is a bestseller or from a rising author, Open Road will use their marketing technology to ensure the title is put in front of a book-buying audience.

Steven Zacharius
Chairman and CEO, Kensington Publishing

Twelve years ago, when I started MysteriousPress.com, I had several choices for a distribution and marketing partner.  Perhaps the smartest decision I’ve made in my long career in publishing was to choose Open Road.

Otto Penzler
Founder and Publisher, The Mysterious Press

The Open Road Ignition eBook program has significantly increased digital sales for Fordham’s backlist books, giving them increased exposure and reaching broad audiences. Their customer service and reporting are exemplary. I look forward to growing the program and making Fordham books available to new readers.

Fredric Nachbaur

Director of Fordham University Press

Morgan James Publishing has seen significant success with our titles in the Open Road Ignition program. We’re very happy with the partnership and look forward to seeing continued success for our authors!

David Hancock

Founder, Morgan James Publishing

Open Road has been an excellent partner for us. By partnering on backlist titles, they have given us an efficient and effective way to promote and enhance our metadata.

Ashley Runyon

Director of The University Press of Kentucky

Since partnering with Open Road Media and their Ignition program, we’ve seen monthly revenue increases of 100% – 200% for participating titles over prior year sales. Their efforts have given a great boost to our backlist eBooks.  Their staff has great ideas, follows through, and hits deadlines, which I greatly appreciate. It’s like having additional staff with the knowledge and commitment to creating new marketing platforms for us.

Lareen Strong

Director of Marketing, Gibbs Smith