Landover, MD, January 5, 2023—RBmedia, the largest audiobook publisher in the world, today announced the acquisition of
Ukemi Audiobooks and
Dharma Audiobooks. Through this acquisition, the company will acquire both audiobook publishing businesses and their full catalog of titles. Ukemi Audiobooks will continue as an imprint under W. F. Howes, an RBmedia international publishing brand, and Dharma Audiobooks will be a sub-imprint under Ukemi Audiobooks.
Since its inception in 2015, Ukemi Audiobooks has produced previously unavailable fiction and nonfiction classics, ranging from ancient Greek, Roman, and Latin texts to principal works by philosophers Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and psychologists Freud and Jung, as well as 20th-century classics, including Thomas Mann’s literary masterpieces and the early novels of Samuel Beckett.
Notable Ukemi Audiobooks titles include:
- Plato’s “The Socratic Dialogues” complete, in dialogue format
- “Buddenbrooks” by Thomas Mann
- “The Good Soldier Švejk” by Jaroslav Hašek
- “History of the Russian Revolution” by Leon Trotsky
- “The World as Will and Idea, Volume 1-3” by Arthur Schopenhauer
- “The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money” by John Maynard Keynes
- “The Rig Veda” translated by Ralph T Griffith, revised for this recording
- Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas, complete in 5 volumes
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 some of the leading teachers and writers.
Notable Dharma Audiobooks titles include:
- The five Nikāyas of the “Sutta Piṭaka” (Dīgha Nikāya, Majjhima Nikāya, Saṃyutta Nikāya, Aṅguttara Nikāya, and Khuddaka Nikāya)
- “The Lotus Sūtra” and “The Vimalakirti Sutra”
- Steve Hagen’s “Buddhism Plain and Simple”
- “What the Buddha Taught” by Walpola Sri Rahula
- “Shōbōgenzō” by Eihei Dōgen
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 for 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.”