Bookmate Limited (owns the same-named e-book service) has withdrawn from the capital of the Russian publishing houses Individuum and Popcorn Books. The company, as well as the co-founder of Individuum, Alexander Dokuchaev, and the CEO of Bookmate in Russia, Andrey Baev, sold their shares to the co—owner of the Read-the-City-Bookworm network, Denis Kotov. The Kommersant newspaper writes about this.
So, since July 27, Denis Kotov, co-owner of the united book network "Read—city-Bookworm", has become the owner of 100% of LLC "Individual Print" and 100% of LLC "Popcorn Books".
Individuum Publishing house was founded in 2015 by Alexey Dokuchaev and Mikhail Vrubel and specializes in non-fiction literature. In 2018, a share in the publishing house was bought by Bookmate (headquartered in Dublin), which owns a subscription service of the same name for reading and listening to books. After the deal, Bookmate and Individuum founded the Popcorn Books brand, under which they began to develop the direction of youth literature. Before the sale to Denis Kotov, 51% of Individual Print LLC belonged to Bookmate Limited, another 49% was owned by Alexey Dokuchaev. In Popcorn Books LLC, Bookmate Limited controlled 65.5% before the transaction, Alexey Dokuchaev — 24.5%, Bookmate CEO in Russia Andrey Baev — 10%.
Denis Kotov is the founder of the St. Petersburg book network "Bukvoed". In 2008, it merged with the network "Novy Knizhny", later renamed to "Read-city". Now D.Kotov owns 7.09% in LLC "Chit-Gorod" and he has the same share in LLC "Partner AI Di". The main beneficiary of the network since 2020 is Oleg Novikov, who also, according to Kommersant sources, continues to actually control the Eksmo-AST group, despite the formal withdrawal from its capital. In Eksmo-AST, Kommersant was assured that the group and its members are not related to the transaction.
