Open Road Media Ignition Delivers the Keys To Driving Backlist Revenue for Partner Publishers

By: Robert Diamond Sep. 26, 2018

NEW YORK, Sept. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ Paul Slavin, CEO of Open Road Integrated Media (OR/M), announced that Open Road Ignition full-service marketing delivered an average of 3X increase in revenue for thousands of partner titles currently enrolled.

OR/M measures its success on the uplift it generates on each publisher's baseline sales for a set of titles. Revenue increases range from 76% to 1,300% over baseline. Dozens of publishers participate in Open Road Ignition, including Grove Atlantic (up 96%), Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (up 157%), Abrams (up 182%), Ben Bella (up 340%), Akashic (up 722%), Diversion (up 1,028%), Choc Lit (up 1,380%), Casemate (up 300%), Church (up 76%).

David Steinberger, CEO of Arcadia Publishing, said "Open Road's strong orientation to backlist marketing has provided an enhanced revenue stream for the publishers who have integrated OR/M's 'white glove' service into their overall backlist strategy. The impressive revenue numbers speak for themselves."

"The return we are generating for our partners has been consistently two to three times higher than their saleseven as ebook sales across the industry persistently decline," Slavin said referring to a recent trade piece on sales in PublishersWeekly. "We continue to add new publishers and new titles to the program and expect to have 5,000 titles by the end of 2018," Slavin added. "Publishers are finding there can be significant upside for their backlist when they partner with us on strategic marketing."

"We've seen tremendous growth for our ebooks in the White Glove program in the few months we've been participating," Randall Lotowycz, Director, Online Retail and Digital Sales for Workman Publishing, said. "The Open Road team has been incredibly helpful and accommodating every step of the way."

The elements of Open Road Ignition include curated title promotions, powerful consumer outreach vehicles, direct demand stimulation, strategic and tactical pricing, consumer segmentation and personalization, content syndication, metadata and copy optimization, all executed by a team of marketers with deep publishing and marketing experience.

"Partnering with Open Road allows us to extend the audience for selected backlist ebook titles. Their focus on delivering new readers and generating sales has produced satisfying financial results," said Lindy Humphreys, Associate Publisher, Digital, Abrams.

About Open Road Integrated Media

Open Road Integrated Media is a prestige content brand delivering digital experiences that entertain and inform readers around the world; their network of digital properties produces compelling stories that keep audiences engagedacross devices and around the world. The Open Road brands include Early Bird Books, a daily eBook deals newsletter and website; The Lineup, for fans of true crime, horror, the mysterious, and the paranormal; The Portalist, for fans of science fiction, fantasy; Murder & Mayhem, for fans of mystery and thriller; The Archive, for fans of history and non-fiction; and A Love So True, for fans of romance; and Open Road Media, a global eBook publisher whose catalog includes legendary authors such as Joan Didion, Graham Greene, William Styron, Alice Walker, Pat Conroy, Gloria Steinem, Octavia Butler, John Jakes, Pearl S. Buck, Walker Percy, and Ruth Rendell.