Hoopla is a company that powers a libraries digital collections. They offer aubiobooks, e-books and other multimedia content. The company currently deal with over 850 libraries and have a portfolio of over 400,000 titles. Last week, Hoopla has just added 50 classic Star Trek audiobooks that are narrated by William Shatner, George Takei, Leonard Nimoy and more.
The Hoopla business model is quite different from most other companies in the digital library space. They make their entire collection available on a libraries website and libraries only pay money when a user checkouts an e-books. They have safeguards in place where collection managers define a payment threshold, so they won’t suddenly go over their allotted budget. I like this model because instead of collection managers picking and choosing what they want to buy, the power rests in the hands of the patrons.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.