Digital content co. LibreDigital raises $4M

The company previously raised $1.3M for a round totaling $5.3M

LibreDigital, a company that specializes in aggregating and promoting digital content, announced Monday that it has secured $4 million in a financing round led by existing investors Adams Capital Management, Triangle Peak Partners, and S3 Ventures.  The capital comes in addition to $1.3 million previously raised in the round.

Founded in 1999, the company claims a lot of “firsts” in the space of digital reading.  The company was originally founded to provide a digital format for newspapers, later moving on to launch an online book-browsing feature (BookBrowse) in 2003, which enabled publishers to allow readers to preview books.  In 2007, LibreDigital took book-marketing to the viral level when it began powering book-sharing widgets through MySpace.  These days, the company delivers digital content to over 40 different businesses and marketplaces, including Amazon, Apple, Google, Barnes & Noble, and Sony.

Currently, the company is working on a browser-based reading experience with HTML5, and is building a social commerce retail partner to develop and expand the market for digital content.

“LibreDigital has powered digital reading for ten years and our ability to span books, magazines, and newspapers is unique,” said Russell P. Reeder, President and CEO of LibreDigital, in a prepared statement. “This investment will enable us to go to market faster and bring new technology offerings to our customers across all three media types.”

In 2010, LibreDigital became a preferred content aggregator for Apple’s iBookstore, and has also inked deals with Barnes & Noble and Sony to provide high-resolution magazines and newspapers to e-readers like the NookColor.  The company also provides a secure HTML5 reader for publishers who are offering free content to Starbuck’s Bookish Reading Club.

LibreDigital provides e-book distribution for seven of the ten largest U.S. book publishers, and recently the company worked with Hachette Book Group to create a customized BookBrowse for each of the four Twilight novels in Stephenie Meyers’ uber popular teen vampire romance series, to be featured on HBG’s Twilight website.  Each Twilight BookBrowse comes with a book-sharing widget so that readers can get their friends and family sucked into the drama as well.

In May 2010, LibreDigital raised $8 million for a total of $31 million raised. 

Image source: LibreDigital.com