Frankfurt am Main/Berlin, March 9, 2026. - Successful conclusion following competition law 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 joins the Bookwire Group that, like Bookwire, has stood for strong digital distribution, technology, and service for years. The aim of the acquisition is to provide even more comprehensive support to customers in the future, particularly in the e-book and audio segment.
For over a decade, Bookwire has stood for scalable publishing technology with clear platform logic. With its proprietary Bookwire OS software, Bookwire offers the publishing industry comprehensive solutions for the production, distribution, analytics, and online marketing of e-books, audiobooks, and print-on-demand products. Its customers include over 3,500 publishers worldwide. The company, which has around 150 employees, markets a steadily growing catalog of more than 2,100,000 titles on over 300 platforms such as Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, Audible, tolino, and Spotify.
Zebralution now adds additional distribution expertise and scale. As one of the first movers in the digital distribution of music, audiobooks, radio plays, e-books, and podcasts, Zebralution works with over 1,500 label and publisher partners worldwide.
"The acquisition of Zebralution strengthens our mission to be the best possible partner with the best technical solutions so that our customers can 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 underlining that a publishing tech company based in Germany can be a successful leader in a global digital niche. We are more than proud of this."
The acquisition is part of Bookwire’s growth strategy, which in recent years has focused consistently on growth, scaling, platform strength, and innovation. "There is substantial potential in the integration," explains Jens Klingelhöfer, CEO and co-founder of Bookwire, adding: "We are combining our strengths, uniting market-leading expertise , increasing our speed of innovation, and thus clearly focusing on the future. Especially in an industry that is currently changing rapidly due to new technologies, this is crucial in order to proactively solve the challenges faced by publishers and audiobook labels. We are talking about the next level of digital publishing."
Tina Jürgens, Managing Director of Zebralution, is also convinced: "Bookwire and Zebralution have an excellent starting point for further growth based on leading technology, a strong international customer and partner portfolio, and in-depth format expertise."
The collaboration will remain unchanged for customers for the time being. Contact persons, services, and processes will continue as usual. "Further developments will take place gradually based on an integration roadmap that will be finalized in the coming months," says 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 and distributes and markets over 1,500 labels, publishers, and producers from around the world. 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 podcasts in the form of the 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 been added to ZEBRALUTION's portfolio.
Further information is available at: www.zebralution.com
About Bookwire
Bookwire GmbH was founded in Frankfurt in 2010 as a service provider for the distribution of e-books and digital content. Since then, Bookwire has developed into one of the leading international companies in the field of digital publishing technology. Currently, more than 150 employees in Germany, the UK, Spain, France, Brazil, Italy, and the US serve more than 3,500 publishers in the areas of e-books, audiobooks, podcasts, and print-on-demand. Around 1,800,000 e-books and 300,000 audiobooks are delivered, analyzed, and marketed via the "Bookwire OS – One Solution" software in all relevant distribution channels. In addition to the latest technology, Bookwire GmbH's publishing customers also have access to the individual support from publishers' relations and marketing managers, who provide customers with comprehensive support. Bookwire GmbH is managed by its founders Jens Klingelhöfer (CEO) and John Ruhrmann (CO-CEO) as well as Christian Lindemann (COO) and, in addition to its headquarters in Frankfurt am Main and its "Development Hub" in Dortmund, also has offices 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
