Zeilen­wert GmbH from Thuringia, which with its sub­sidiary Libreka GmbH is one of the lead­ing com­pa­nies in the field of e‑book aggre­ga­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion in Ger­man-speak­ing coun­tries, was acquired by the Dan­ish com­pany WeDo­Books A/S, the lead­ing provider of dig­i­tal library solu­tions and dis­trib­u­tor of dig­i­tal lit­er­a­ture in Scan­di­navia, in Jan­u­ary 2025. The acqui­si­tion marks the begin­ning of a joint jour­ney to bring the world’s most advanced dig­i­tal library sys­tem to the Ger­man mar­ket and fur­ther expand inno­v­a­tive dis­tri­b­u­tion capa­bil­i­ties in the DACH region. 

“We are very pleased to strengthen our strate­gic part­ner­ship with Libreka through this acqui­si­tion. Scan­di­na­vian libraries, espe­cially Dan­ish libraries, are the undis­puted lead­ers in dig­i­tal lend­ing and we look for­ward to bring­ing all this exper­tise and estab­lished tech­nol­ogy to the Ger­man-speak­ing library mar­ket,” says Lasse Nyrup, CEO of WeDo­Books. WeDo­Books is behind the dom­i­nant dig­i­tal solu­tions for libraries in Den­mark, Swe­den and Nor­way, where the company’s plat­forms are used by 98 per­cent of all Scan­di­na­vian libraries. In addi­tion, WeDo­Books is the lead­ing dis­trib­u­tor of dig­i­tal lit­er­a­ture for pub­lish­ers in Den­mark and Swe­den. “We see great poten­tial for our library prod­ucts in the Ger­man-speak­ing mar­ket. We have expe­ri­ence in intro­duc­ing pric­ing and lend­ing mod­els that cre­ate a healthy bal­ance between pub­lish­ers and libraries and we believe that the tim­ing is right as dig­i­ti­za­tion in Ger­many will con­tinue to gain momen­tum in the com­ing years. At the same time, we can give Ger­man libraries a really strong offer­ing with a proven plat­form that will also be free for them. We don’t take any money for the plat­form, so libraries can spend their entire bud­get on e‑books and audio­books for their users,” Nyrup continues.

Libreka Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Thorsten Schreiber is also opti­mistic about the future fol­low­ing the takeover. “WeDo­Books has achieved impres­sive growth in Scan­di­navia over the last ten years or so and has man­aged to cre­ate a healthy com­pany and some very inno­v­a­tive prod­ucts that we can now ben­e­fit from on the Ger­man mar­ket. The oppor­tu­nity to expand into new busi­ness areas was a major moti­vat­ing fac­tor for Zeilen­wert & Libreka. We believe that together with WeDo­Books we can mas­sively expand the dig­i­tal lit­er­a­ture offer­ing in Ger­man-speak­ing coun­tries. We already have a very well-devel­oped net­work of pub­lish­ing part­ner­ships and dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nels. With WeDo­Books’ expe­ri­ence and tech­nol­ogy, we can increase the level of ser­vice for our cus­tomers and at the same time expand our cus­tomer port­fo­lio to include solu­tions for libraries and schools. The syn­er­gies are obvi­ous. We are con­vinced that the inte­gra­tion of Zeilen­wert & Libreka into the Dan­ish com­pany is a per­fect match,” says Thorsten Schreiber, CEO of Libreka.

For bm|t, which not only financed Zeilen­wert itself but also the acqui­si­tion of Libreka GmbH from MVB in 2015, the sale to WeDo­Books marks the suc­cess­ful end of an almost 13-year part­ner­ship with the com­pany and its found­ing team. “Together with other pri­vate investors, we have man­aged to posi­tion Zeilen­wert as one of the lead­ing e‑book dis­trib­u­tors and ser­vice providers and are delighted to have found a new owner in WeDo­Books, which not only promises reli­a­bil­ity and con­tin­ued high ser­vice qual­ity for exist­ing cus­tomers, but also invests in the loca­tion in Rudolstadt/Thuringia as the head­quar­ters for the planned expan­sion,” says Stephan Beier, Senior Invest­ment Man­ager at bm|t and long­stand­ing mem­ber of the company’s advi­sory board.

About WeDoBooks:

WeDo­Books is now the largest provider of dig­i­tal lit­er­a­ture in Scan­di­navia. WeDo­Books is a dis­trib­u­tor in Den­mark and Swe­den and has con­tracts with all pub­lish­ers for the deliv­ery of e‑books and audio­books to libraries. WeDo­Books deliv­ers the dig­i­tal library solu­tion to more than 95 per­cent of libraries in Den­mark, Nor­way and Swe­den and pro­vides inspir­ing read­ing expe­ri­ences to more than 150,000 students.

About Libreka

Libreka GmbH is a sub­sidiary of Zeilen­wert GmbH and, with over 80,000 pub­lish­ers, more than 1,000 affil­i­ated retail part­ners and over 4.5 mil­lion e‑books, is one of the largest B2B dis­tri­b­u­tion plat­forms for e‑books in the Ger­man-speak­ing world. Libreka offers pub­lish­ers oppor­tu­ni­ties to pro­duce and dis­trib­ute dig­i­tal con­tent. In addi­tion to large B2C plat­forms, Libreka’s global dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work also includes inde­pen­dent book­sellers, spe­cial­ized stores, library ser­vice providers and companies.

About bm|t

Erfurt-based beteili­gungs­man­age­ment thürin­gen (bm|t) — a sub­sidiary of Thüringer Auf­baubank — is the first port of call for equity invest­ments in Thuringia. bm|t cur­rently man­ages twelve invest­ment funds with a total vol­ume of EUR 445 mil­lion and invests in inno­v­a­tive and fast-grow­ing com­pa­nies from all sec­tors and in all phases of the cor­po­rate life cycle.