OverDrive released a glimpse at its 2011 statistics today, and the Cleveland-based ebook vendor is reporting a huge growth in page views and other key metrics.
The company, which is promising more details at the American Library Association’s Midwinter Conference which begins Friday in Dallas, said that its library website traffic doubled to 1.6 billion page views, a 130 percent increase over 2010. In addition, 35 million digital titles were checked out in 2011 (up from 15 million in 2010), and the number of users who have installed the company’s media console has jumped to 11 million, an increase of 84 percent.
Although the company did not break out numbers on ebooks, it had previously reported that it was on a pace to exceed 16 million checkouts in 2011. Through September, ebook checkouts were up 200 percent.
Other 2011 numbers released today from “virtual branch” websites:
- 99.5 million visitor sessions, up 107 percent
- Mobile device use increased to 22 percent of all checkouts
The company also announced today that at the ALA conference it will introduce new digital book discovery services, including an “all digital” catalog feed that will allow library patrons to browse and sample entire publisher and author ebook and audiobook backlist and long tail collections regardless of whether the library has acquired the works for lending.
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