Frankfurt am Main / Berlin, March 9, 2026 – Successful completion following antitrust review: Bookwire GmbH acquires 100% of the shares in Zebralution GmbH and its subsidiaries Open Publishing GmbH and EMS GmbH from GEMA.
Bookwire is the new owner of Zebralution. With the closing, a company that – like Bookwire – has stood for strong digital distribution, technology, and service for years joins the Bookwire Group. The aim of the acquisition is to provide even more comprehensive support to customers in the future – especially in the e-book and audio segments.
For over a decade, Bookwire has stood for scalable publishing technology with a clear platform logic. With its proprietary software, Bookwire OS, Bookwire offers the publishing industry comprehensive solutions for the production, distribution, analytics, and online marketing of ebooks, audiobooks, and print-on-demand products. Its customers include over 3,500 publishers worldwide. The company, with approximately 150 employees, markets a constantly growing catalog of more than 2,100,000 titles across over 300 platforms, including Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, Audible, tolino, and Spotify. With the acquisition of Zebralution, Bookwire now gains additional distribution expertise and scalability. As a first mover in the digital distribution of music, audiobooks, radio plays, ebooks, and podcasts, Zebralution collaborates with over 1,000 label and publisher partners globally.
“The acquisition of Zebralution strengthens our mission to be the best possible partner with the best technical solutions, enabling our customers to be even more successful in the future,” says John Ruhrmann , Managing Director and Co-Founder of Bookwire. “With this integration, we are strengthening our international position in our core business of e-books and audio – and at the same time underscoring that a publishing tech company based in Germany can be a successful leader in a global digital niche. We are extremely proud of this.”
The acquisition is part of Bookwire’s growth strategy, which has consistently focused on growth, scaling, platform strength, and innovation in recent years. “The integration holds substantial potential,” explains Jens Klingelhöfer, CEO and co-founder of Bookwire, elaborating: “We are combining our strengths, uniting market-leading expertise, increasing our speed of innovation, and thus clearly focusing on the future. This is crucial, especially in an industry currently undergoing rapid change due to new technologies, to proactively address the challenges faced by publishers and audiobook labels. We’re talking about the next level of digital publishing.”
Tina Jürgens , Managing Director of Zebralution, is also convinced: “For Bookwire and Zebralution, a leading technology, a strong international customer and partner portfolio and in-depth format expertise create an excellent starting point for further growth.”
According to Bookwire, the collaboration will remain unchanged for customers for the time being. Contact persons, services, and processes will continue as usual. “Further developments will be implemented gradually based on an integration roadmap, which will be finalized in the coming months,” said Christian Lindemann , COO of Bookwire.
About Zebralution
ZEBRALUTION was founded in 2004 as the first digital distributor for independent labels in Europe. The company operates with its own development, marketing, and business teams from ten offices in eight countries, distributing and marketing over 1,500 labels, publishers, and producers worldwide. In addition to music distribution, ZEBRALUTION has also been developing new marketing models for publishers and their audiobook productions since 2010. In 2018, this was expanded to include podcasting through its subsidiary ZEBRALUTION Podcast (formerly zebra-audio.net ). With the acquisition of the platform company Encoding Management Service (EMS) in 2019, the development and operation of technologies for digital media distribution has also become part of ZEBRALUTION’s portfolio. Further information can be found at: www.zebralution.com
About Bookwire
Bookwire GmbH was founded in Frankfurt in 2010 as a service provider for the distribution of ebooks and digital content by publishers. Since then, Bookwire has developed into one of the leading international companies in the field of digital publishing technology. Its current staff of over 150 in Germany, Great Britain, Spain, France, Brazil, Italy, and the USA serves more than 3,500 publishers in the areas of ebooks, audiobooks, podcasts, and print-on-demand. Around 1,800,000 ebooks and 300,000 audiobooks are delivered, analyzed, and marketed across all relevant distribution channels using the “Bookwire OS – One Solution” software. In addition to accessing the latest technology, Bookwire GmbH’s publishing clients also benefit from personalized support from dedicated Publisher Relations & Marketing Managers who provide ongoing assistance. Bookwire GmbH is managed by the founders Jens Klingelhöfer (CEO) and John Ruhrmann (CO-CEO) as well as by Christian Lindemann (COO) and, in addition to its headquarters in Frankfurt am Main and its “Development Hub” in Dortmund, also operates branches in Barcelona, London, Milan, São Paulo, New York and Paris. Further information is available at: www.bookwire.com
For media inquiries, please contact:
Jan Stausberg, Corporate PR Manager Bookwire, jan.stausberg@bookwire.de
