Stephen King, Nick Hornby, Ken Follett other best-sellers headed toward public libraries—-via Penguin-OverDrive connection
OverDrive news release, slightly edited…
Public libraries can now lend download audiobooks and eBooks by best-selling authors such as Stephen King and Nick Hornby, as well as blockbuster titles like “The Pillars of the Earth,” to their patrons. OverDrive now offers Penguin Group titles in audiobook and eBook formats to its network of library partners. Hundreds of Penguin Group audiobooks and eBooks will be added to OverDrive’s e-warehouse, supplementing OverDrive’s collection of more than 150,000 eBook, audiobook, music and video titles. Libraries can add Penguin Group to their OverDrive-powered collection by logging into OverDrive’s collection development portal at www.contentreserve.com.
“Penguin is one of the largest English-Language trade book publishers in the world, and now public libraries can add digital books from this global publisher to their download collection,” said Erica Lazzaro, OverDrive Licensing Counsel. “We look forward to working with Penguin Group to offer their popular titles to our 7,500 library partners.”
“Teaming with OverDrive gives us a unique opportunity to offer our expansive collection to the digital library market and deliver our quality titles to even more readers,” said John Fagan, Penguin eBooks Marketing Director. “Library users will now have the chance to download audiobook and eBook titles from some of the biggest authors in the world.”
Through OverDrive, Penguin Group provides libraries with access to hundreds of blockbuster audiobooks and eBooks. The Penguin Audio catalog includes hits like Diablo Cody’s “Candy Girl”, Ken Follett’s “The Pillars of the Earth”, Patricia Cornwell’s “Book of the Dead”, as well as titles from Stephen King, Nick Hornby, and Tyler Perry. Frontlist and backlist eBooks from the Penguin Group’s stable of best-selling authors is available in both Mobipocket PRC and Adobe PDF formats. New titles from Penguin Group in both audiobook and eBook formats will be added to the OverDrive catalog every month.
To see if your library is a member of OverDrive’s network, and to find titles of eBooks, audiobooks, music, and videos available from public libraries, go to http://search.overdrive.com.
August 27th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Oh cool! My library has both volumes of Bujold’s The Sharing Knife as e-books. Haven’t read those yet. Will have to check them out when I get home.
August 27th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Overdrive seems like a great concept. Download ebooks, music, videos etc and after a certain period of time they automatically expire.
I own a kindle but I really don’t want to spend ten bucks a pop for popular fiction and bestsellers. I’d much rather find them at the library. Unfortunately, my guess is that the proprietary Overdrive software won’t connect to a kindle and the kindle probably won’t allow any DRM scheme besides Amazon’s.
What I’d really like is a scheme like Netflix where I could pay a monthly fee and have a certain number of ebook titles at a time. Finish one and “send it back” and the next title automatically downloads.
Oh, and Chris, The Sharing Knife is up to three volumes. And probably more to come since number three really didn’t wrap up all the plot threads.
August 27th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
This is good news for Sony Reader users, if they can get through the ADE steps. Then again, some people could be satisfied with reading on their desktop/notebook (great way to read while at work, eh?).