The recent news that Rakuten is acquiring OverDrive, as Gary Price reports on Infodocket, is, or is not, news. It's news if you didn't see this coming (shame on you!), but not news if you have been observing the industry of late. As I have noted on the Kitchen before, the environment is ripe for consolidation. We will see more of it in the months ahead. Sometimes consolidation is simply a matter of buying up market share, a tried and true strategy in mature markets, and sometimes there is a deeper component to it
Steve Potash
Eugene G. Schwartz is editor at large for ForeWord Reviews, an industry observer and an occasional columnist for Book Business magazine. In an earlier career, he was in the printing business and held production management positions at Random House, Prentice-Hall/Goodyear and CRM Books/Psychology Today. A former PMA (IBPA) board member, he has headed his own publishing consultancy, Consortium House. He is also Co-Founder of Worthy Shorts Inc., a development stage online private press and publication service for professionals as well as an online back office publication service for publishers and associations. He is on the Publishing Business Conference and Expo Advisory Board.
Much has been written about publishers' early reluctance to license or sell any e-books to libraries. That is mostly past.
But don't get crazy and think that this must mean there is actual agreement or standards about how to structure the relationships between e-book publishers and their library customers.
Steve Potash, President and CEO of OverDrive, the Cleveland-based provider of technology for managing and distributing digital content for lending libraries, described the various schemes that publishers and producers have structured for charging their library clients for their digital materials.
Overdrive made some announcements over the last week. The first came on Friday where the e-book lending company announced it is taking steps to offer its digital content in China. The company stated it will be working with libraries, school and retailers to establish digital lending platforms in China. OverDrive CEO Steve Potash signed a an [...]
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Like many of you, we’re wondering about what caused today’s OverDrive/Penguin news:
"OverDrive Suspends Access to New Penguin eBook Titles, 'Get For Kindle' Access Also Shut Down"
Only time will tell why Penguin decided to change their policy with OverDrive (and libraries) but we’re wondering if a February letter by OverDrive CEO Steve Potash might provide clues...
Quietly, the Austin Public Library system began offering e-books for download last month. It's part of a nationwide trend, as online retailer Amazon rolled out library-borrowing capabilities for its Kindle device in September. And while some libraries have been lending e-books for some time, the Kindle's entrance promises to open them up to an even wider audience.
In the first significant revision to lending terms for ebook circulation, HarperCollins has announced that new titles licensed from library ebook vendors will be able to circulate only 26 times before the license expires.
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