Audiobook publisher RBmedia has bought Ukemi Audiobooks and Dharma Audiobooks. Ukemi Audiobooks will continue as an imprint under RBmedia's W.F. Howes brand, and Dharma Audiobooks will be a sub-imprint under Ukemi Audiobooks.
Ukemi Audiobooks produces previously unavailable fiction and nonfiction classics, ranging from ancient Greek, Roman, and Latin texts to principal works by Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Freud and Jung, as well as 20th-century classics, including Thomas Mann's literary masterpieces and the early novels of Samuel Beckett.
Dharma Audiobooks specializes in Buddhist recordings of all kinds--biographies, histories, talks, suttas and sutras, commentaries, and classic literature. The recordings draw on all the main traditions--Theravada, Mahayana, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, Western Buddhist--and feature leading teachers and writers.
Nicolas Soames, founder and managing director of Ukemi Audiobooks and Dharma Audiobooks, said, "I started Ukemi Audiobooks and Dharma Audiobooks in 2015 to provide highly specialist titles, most of which were not otherwise available. Seven years later, it's clear that both labels would really benefit from the much larger international distribution and marketing that W.F. Howes and RBmedia can provide. I was encouraged and pleased to find that such a large organization was genuinely interested in these specialist corners of the audiobook community and know that these two labels are in capable hands."
Miles Stevens-Hoare, managing director of RBmedia International, said, "Ukemi Audiobooks and Dharma Audiobooks titles have generated worldwide interest since their inception in 2015. We look forward to significantly expanding distribution of the existing catalog through RBmedia's powerful global distribution network, while also publishing new audiobook titles under our W.F. Howes brand."
Billing itself as "the largest audiobook publisher in the world," RBmedia includes Recorded Books, HighBridge, Tantor Media and is owned by private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts.