2014 saw widespread growth in K-12 market for eBooks and digital content
2014 was a great year, and we’re excited to see what 2015 will bring! This past year, we experienced a record number of new K-12 partnerships in the U.S. and abroad. As of January 1, 2015, nearly 12,000 schools and districts have incorporated the OverDrive service into their curriculum and library plans, a 50% increase over the same time last year. We now works with K-12 partners in 38 countries, with 10 countries added to our global network in 2014.
Our school eBook catalog has also reached record size, with 24% growth over the last year, adding more than 100,000 new titles and bringing the total digital catalog available to schools to more than 2 million titles. Audiobook availability has increased 15%, with more than 5,500 new titles available to our school partners. Notable additions to the catalog in 2014 included Pearson eTextbooks, Macmillan, and classic eBooks from Dr. Seuss. In addition, the 2014 acquisition of Teacher’s Notebook has given our K-12 partners access to teacher-created curriculum materials from more than 500,000 educators. In 2014, OverDrive also introduced Narrated eBooks, a feature that provides a single eBook file synchronized with audio. Publishers supplied hundreds of popular children’s titles in this new format, which are now available for schools and libraries.
Students and educators are accessing OverDrive-powered websites and engaging with the school’s digital content more than ever before. The number of new visitors to these websites grew 234% to 2 million year-over-year. The school digital content websites had 6.26 million visits in 2014, an increase of 276% over the previous year.
Are you at FETC? If so, stop by and visit us at booth #336 to see demonstrations including fixed-layout titles and narrated eBooks, and learn more about what we have in store this year. Or check out the sample of one of the narrated eBooks available from OverDrive, Mud Puddle, below.
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