De Marque, a digital services provider and e-book distributor based in Quebec City, has purchased Feedbooks, e-book retailer and self-publishing platform based in France for 230,000 euros ($250,000) and the relief of 62,000 euros ($68,000) owed to De Marque. Feedbooks had been placed into receivership — the equivalent of filing for Chapter 11 in France — in June 2018. In a related matter, NetGalley has acquired full ownership of NetGalley France, a company it had co-owned with Feedbooks, for 36,000 euros ($39,500).
Founded in 2007, Feedbooks offers some 900,000 titles for sale in French, English, German and Spanish; it also developed its own proprietary ereading platform, Aldiko, which is in use by some two million people. This is the second major acquisition for the Montreal-based De Marque in the past two years, having purchased Spanish platform, Libranda, in 2018.
The purchase brings De Marque's total catalog to more than 1.4 million e-book and audiobook titles, from more than 2,300 publishers, in five languages. In all, De Marque offers e-books through its white label solution at some 1,300 points of sale worldwide and its e-lending service for libraries is used by over 2,000 libraries in Canada and Europe.
De Marque’s CEO Marc Boutet is proud to announce that this merger creates the first international group to distribute and market multilingual digital content. "This is an important step in our vision to maintain our international leadership in the fields of e-reading and digital content monetization," said De Marque CEO Marc Boutet in a prepared statement. "The company's goal is to create an open network of renowned international experts and to be the reference in regards to e-reading and digital media consumption."
This article has been updated with additional and corrected information.
