Moderator: Below, edited, is an OverDrive release. The Obama title shown is from Crown, a Random House subsidiary. – D.R.
Public libraries can now offer e-books by best-selling authors such as Barack Obama, Dean Koontz, and Christopher Paolini to their patrons.
OverDrive, the leading digital book distributor to public libraries, has arranged to offer Random House, Inc. titles in both Adobe PDF and Mobipocket PRC formats to its network of library partners.
In this non-exclusive agreement, more than 6,500 Random House eBooks have been added to OverDrive’s e-warehouse, supplementing OverDrive’s collection of more than 100,000 eBook, audiobook, music and video titles. Libraries can add Random House eBooks to their OverDrive-powered collection by logging into OverDrive’s collection development portal.
“We are thrilled to team with Random House to offer one of the largest catalogs of best-selling eBooks in the public library market,” said Erica Lazzaro, OverDrive Senior Licensing Counsel. “Random House’s enormous stable of celebrated authors and popular titles are sure to attract more patrons to libraries’ digital download collections.”
“We look forward to working with OverDrive in bringing our fabulous titles to the library market through OverDrive’s innovative download service for libraries,” said Marcia Purcell, Vice President, Adult Library and Academic Marketing. “We see this as another opportunity for library patrons.”
Works by best-selling authors such as Cormac McCarthy, Luanne Rice, Tami Hoag and Mitch Albom, as well as genre icons like Louis L’Amour, are now available to libraries as eBooks through the new Random House collection. Current best sellers such as Charles Bock’s “Beautiful Children,” Steven Waldman’s “Founding Faith” and Anne Rice’s “Christ the Lord” are also available, as are hundreds of popular children’s titles like “Eragon” and “Eldest.”
New release titles from Random House will be added to the collection each month. To see if your library is a member of OverDrive’s network, and to find titles of eBooks, audio books, music, and videos available from public libraries, go here.
Further thoughts from moderator: Here’s hoping that the Obama book and others will soon be in .epub—and that ways can be found to avoid using DRM! I’ll address these issues in a forthcoming post. Meanwhile I’m delighted to see Random letting more books go E! – D.R.
