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Smashwords, the world’s largest distributor of self-published ebooks, on May 20 announced a new partnership with OverDrive that will make more than 200,000 ebooks from 80,000 self-published authors and independent presses available to libraries and their patrons via the OverDrive platform. All titles will be sold as perpetual, non-expiring licenses with no loan caps, and will be made available to patrons under a one ebook, one user model.
While self-published titles may be an option for public libraries when it comes to acquiring ebooks, not so for schools, according to SLJ columnist Christopher Harris, who lays out the ongoing challenges for ebook adoption in K-12.
Completing a deal originally announced in August, Douglas County Libraries last week acquired almost 10,000 ebooks from indie distributor Smashwords, using the company’s new Library Direct service. The transaction took much longer than initially expected, but it ultimately helped both parties discover ways to weed, filter, and tweak a list of independent titles to develop an optimal collection for DCL’s patrons.
Califa, Douglas County Libraries, and The Internet Archive’s Open Library have made purchase commitments to acquire variations of the top 10,000 best-selling ebooks from indie distributor Smashwords. All told, the three separate commitments total about $100,000. The sales will occur through Library Direct, a new service that Smashwords has launched to facilitate the transfer of large collections of ebooks to libraries.
The San Mateo-based Califa Group, which is the largest library network in California, has made major strides in its project to create an ebook ownership model along the same lines as the Douglas County Libraries in Colorado.
3M Library Systems will have representatives discussing new partnerships with INscribe Digital, Smashwords, The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group and the National Book Network (NBN) at next week’s Book Expo America conference in New York, the company announced on May 31. Together, these new partnerships will increase the ebook system’s total list of offerings by more than 100,000, effectively doubling its collection to more than 200,000 titles from more than 300 publishers.
