Overdrive is the main company libraries use in the USA, Canada, Australia, and the UK in order to download books. There has been some negative sentiment lately due to the fact that Penguin is pulling all new titles from the company because they feel giving the books away undervalues the authors work. Overdrive does have a number of major companies still supporting ebook lending such as; Random House, HarperCollins, John Wiley, Harlequin Romance, Kensington, Perseus, Sourcebooks, Scholastic, Chronicle, among others, and hundreds of their best-selling authors strongly support and are partnering with OverDrive to build stronger connections to library eBook readers. Overdrive spoke out today laying down the framework for new initiatives and agreements it has in place to continue staying relevant.
One of the main aspects the company is employing to bolster its portfolio of electronic books with content partners. These are the companies that agree to allow their books to be loaned out to patrons participating in the borrowing of ebooks. Recently they have signed up ABDO Publishing Company, Andrews McMeel Publishing, Cherry Lake Publishing, David C Cook, Disney Digital Books, Evan-Moor Educational Publishers, Harvest House Publishers, Inc., Johns Hopkins Uiversity Press, Lonely Planet Pty, Ltd, McFarland, Raintree, Rosen Publishing Group, Saddleback Educational Publishing, Skyhorse Publishing, Thomas Nelson, Baker Publishing Group, Belgrave House, Carson-Dellosa Publishing, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Houghton Mifflin, Open Road Integrated Media, and many more. These new partners will allow for more books to be purchased for your library.
Aside from new content partners they have made changes to the new WIN system that was released last year. 60 different libraries now have the ability to allow readers to easily discover titles from the digital media catalog and instantly link to online booksellers offering the title for sale. Obviously with most libraries they only have a few copies of the latest bestsellers available and sometimes the waiting list is huge. This new BUY IT NOW service will help patrons shop around for the best deal among many different booksellers.
via Overdrive
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.
