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Blurb Acquired by Business Partner

Blurb has been acquired by Reischling Press:

Reischling Press, Inc. (RPI), a pioneer in the personalized print services market, has acquired Blurb, an industry-leading e-commerce platform of print-on-demand books, magazines, wall décor, and digital services for self-publishers and creative professionals, the company announced today.

The acquisition extends RPI’s overall strategy to offer a full suite of services and e-commerce platform solutions to businesses around the world, said Rick Bellamy, CEO of RPI.

“This is a strategic acquisition for us and culminates the long-term partnership between our two companies,” Bellamy said. “Blurb’s primary audiences are creative professionals and self-publishers, and this acquisition leverages the strengths of each organization to deliver a comprehensive e-commerce print solution for professionals, businesses, and consumer brands.”

It’s been some time since Blurb got a lot of press, but what they were chiefly known for was developing what I am told was a really awesome print layout platform. (I favor ebooks, so I never really noticed.) It would make a lot of sense for a printer to buy them for their tech.

BTW, there is one important detail not mentioned in the press release. This acquisition came out of the blue for my source; he told me that he didn’t even get to see a prospectus before the deal was announced.

If we put that detail together with the fact that Reischling is Blurb’s back-end print partner, we end up with a high probability that Blurb was in debt to Reischling, and was acquired as a way of settling the debt.

That is my guess, anyway.

Thanks, Steve!

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Comments


Harald Johnson August 10, 2020 um 10:45 am

Interesting news. I became familiar with Blurb (and its CEO Eileen Gittens) during my final consulting years with HP (~2009ish). I was just starting to think about Indie publishing for fiction and gave Blurb a try for a small hardback photo book for my wife as a birthday gift. Because I was very familiar with HP’s e-ink Indigo system (which Blurb used, and maybe Reischling handled?), I figured the book would turn out OK. It was better than OK, and I also noticed and liked the layout platform. Fast forward 10+ years, and I’m a 100% Indie novelist doing ebooks and paperbacks via Amazon KDP (using ePub and InDesign for total formatting control). So I have a soft spot for Blurb and wish them well.

Nate Hoffelder August 10, 2020 um 1:43 pm

In retrospect this is a tool that should have been built to license to POD printers such as Amazon, and not for use by authors.


Self-Publishing News: Blurb is Sold – My Blog October 17, 2020 um 8:39 am

[…] many years been the go-to for anyone wanting to publish high quality books with a lot of graphics. Blurb has been acquired by Reichling, who did theirs printing. We’ll see if that has an impact on the service (which was excellent) or […]


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