Indie Author Project partnership brings top indie authors to OverDrive platform in simultaneous use access model

 

 

CLEVELAND – June 25, 2019 – Following the completion of a successful year-long pilot program, Rakuten OverDrive today announced the July 1st availability of curated Indie Author Project (IAP) ebooks to their partners worldwide. The IAP ebook collections feature award-winning titles from across the world that are hand-selected by Library Journal, Black Caucus of the ALA (BCALA), and a network of hundreds of librarians participating in the IAP’s regional indie ebook contests. This is a royalty-paying program to the selected authors, and it is the latest development in the transformation of deeper mainstream public library involvement in the indie book world.

Director of WiLS statewide consortia (WI) Stef Morril participated in the pilot, and her library system saw impressive ebook engagement and usage across all their participating libraries. “For years, there has been interest in sharing great indie enooks with patrons, especially from authors in our own communities. Locating and selecting that content has been challenging and integrating it with our existing OverDrive content has not been possible.” Morril adds, “As libraries reinvent themselves as creative centers of their communities, forging and developing relationships with local writers is incredibly important. We are proving libraries can contribute meaningful value to authors beyond just buying their ebooks to be loaned out one at a time.”

Mitchell Davis, CEO of Indie Author Project creator BiblioBoard, believes this partnership closes the loop on the original vision of the program. “Originally, our SELF-e program was pitched to authors as a discovery and marketing platform and extending availability to OverDrive helped further that mission,” says Davis. “But as the program has developed and matured, we have built a network of hundreds of librarians who are directly engaged in finding and promoting their best local authors. The OverDrive curated collections, including winners, finalists, and shortlist ebooks of North American regional contests, represent the cream of the crop.”

OverDrive founder and CEO Steve Potash agrees, adding that indie authors give OverDrive an opportunity to pilot and test innovative ebook access models.  “There is clearly a network effect to simultaneous use ebooks that we want to unlock on the OverDrive platform,” states Potash. “We believe libraries play a vital role in helping get books into the world and in front of readers, which drives all types of commercial activity for the authors. Simultaneous use helps this process, and we are excited to experiment with the best indie authors and curators in North America to push this model forward and help them find more readers.”

OverDrive has been an early supporter of the Panorama Project, an industry-wide data project which aims to incorporate data from this indie ebook partnership to further illustrate the value of library ebook availability. “We are hoping to use the first Indie Author of the Year’s award-winning book as a test case to see what data can be generated from a comprehensive, worldwide simultaneous use availability,” Davis says.

Sample collections of the new indie curated ebook collections in YA, romance, and sci-fi/fantasy genres will be available to OverDrive partners on July 1 with expanded full collections available commercially by the end of 2019.

For more information on the Indie Author Project, visit https://indieauthorproject.com/.

 

About Indie Author Project (Self-E)

Indie Author Project (Self-E) is a partnership between Biblioboard/Bibliolabs and Library

Journal that makes it easier for librarians to add content from local authors to their print

and digital collections.

 

About Rakuten OverDrive

Rakuten OverDrive is the leading digital reading platform for libraries and schools worldwide. We are dedicated to “a world enlightened by reading” by delivering the industry’s largest catalog of ebooks, audiobooks, magazines and other digital media to a growing network of 43,000 libraries and schools in 76 countries. Named one of TIME’s Best iPhone and Android Apps of 2018, Libby is the “one-tap reading app” for libraries. Founded in 1986, OverDrive is based in Cleveland, Ohio USA and owned by Tokyo-based Rakuten. www.overdrive.com

Contact:
David Burleigh
Director of Brand & Marketing Communications
dburleigh@overdrive.com

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