Open Road Hands Print Books to Lakeside Book Company From Summer 2027

Open Road has signed a contract for Lakeside Book Company to print and distribute its print books, with the move set to take effect in summer 2027. Publishers Marketplace reported the agreement on 10 November 2026.

Distribution is the part of publishing most readers never see. It covers storing books, printing them, shipping them to shops and online sellers, and dealing with returns, the copies retailers send back unsold. A contract is the legally binding agreement that sets those terms, and here it moves that work from Open Road's current arrangements to Lakeside.

Lakeside also agreed to offer Open Road's Ignition program to its more than 150 distribution clients. Ignition is Open Road's ebook marketing program, a set of tools for promoting electronic books to readers. Lakeside's own Dover Publications division will be one of the first to use it.

The deal is a supply-chain change rather than a change to any particular book. It settles who prints and ships Open Road's paperbacks and hardbacks, and who passes Ignition on to other publishers. Authors and titles are not part of the announcement.

For Lakeside, the agreement adds a publisher to a roster that already runs to more than 150 clients. For Open Road, it hands the physical side of the business to a larger distributor and keeps its own marketing service in the picture. Both moves will be visible to the trade first, and to readers only later, once books start arriving from the new arrangement.