From the press release:
OverDrive, the leading global digital distributor of eBooks and audiobooks to libraries and schools, will meet this week at the Frankfurt Book Fair with major and independent publishers and booksellers to share details of its new WIN Catalog. A key part of OverDrive’s WIN platform enhancements (“Want It Now”) for its network of 15,000 libraries worldwide, the WIN Catalog will maximize discovery and potential sell-through by providing samples and links to national and local booksellers for library website visitors that discover a title and “Want It Now.”
The WIN Catalog will feature complete long tail collections of eBook and audiobook titles that comprise a publisher’s catalog, 90% or more of which libraries do not have available for lending. Libraries that opt-in to offer access to OverDrive’s WIN Catalog will earn affiliate fees for all sales referred through a link from their public library website.
“Public libraries offer for lending a small fraction of publishers’ eBook or audiobook catalogs,” said Erica Lazzaro, OverDrive Director of Publisher Relations. “The WIN Catalog will take hundreds of thousands of early, midlist, and backlist eBook titles that are virtually invisible to library customers and present them for discovery. WIN will also enable for patrons who do not want to wait for popular titles to become available the option to immediately shop for it from a list of booksellers that support their local library.”
“At this time, libraries do not have the funds to purchase all of the bestselling titles, let alone mid- and back-list titles,” said Christopher Platt, director of collections and circulation operations at the New York Public Library. “With the WIN Catalog from OverDrive, in addition to the tens of thousands of eBooks we offer for lending, we will have the ability to reference, browse, sample and provide a connecting point to entire catalogs of eBook titles, allowing us to serve our patrons and community in the best way possible.”
To enable the ‘buy-it-now’ links from the library websites, OverDrive has entered into associate and affiliate programs with national and independent bookstores including Amazon, Barnes&Noble.com, Powells.com and Books-A-Million, and is in dialogue with major and independent booksellers in the UK, Canada, Australia and other markets. For every retail sale referred from a WIN Catalog, the library will earn a credit for the entire affiliate fee. Publishers and retailers can apply to join the OverDrive affiliate network through OverDrive’s online admin portal, Content Reserve (www.contentreserve.com).
Thanks to Michael von Glahn for the link.
