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OverDrive announces most downloaded books for January
February 18, 2009 | 5:33 pm
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By Paul Biba
OverDrive, a distributor of audiobooks and eBooks to libraries, schools, and retailers, today announced the ‘Most Downloaded Books from the Library’ for January 2009. Audiobook and eBook titles by Stephenie Meyer, James Patterson, Barack Obama, Lisa Kleypas, and Malcolm Gladwell were among the most popular downloads from OverDrive-powered libraries last month. John Grisham’s “The Associate” and Janet Evanovich’s “Plum Spooky” also appeared on the monthly Most Downloaded fiction audiobooks list for the first time.
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Again, the lack of open format titles on these lists is notable.
Of the three MP3 versions of titles that appear on the Adult Fiction list, only one – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – could be seen as truly, potentially, ‘in demand’ because of the raised profile due to the film. The other two, ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and ‘Atlas Shrugged’ seem to be clear examples of library users selecting the titles out of name recognition alone. The fact that any of these three titles show up on a list otherwise dominated by clearly popular, high demand titles shows that there is a demand for open format titles, so much so that people will “borrow” any title that is recognizable, once they discover that the titles they would actually prefer aren’t available in a format they can access.
Not to knock Jane Austen, but for a title of hers to end up on a list like this, surrounded by James Patterson, Patricia Cornwell and other contemporary popular titles, is more a result of users “settling” for the book, as opposed to seeking it out specifically.
The fact that public libraries spend public monies to provide access to a service that so few of their users can actually use in the way they would like to (or the way that OverDrive likes to imply they can in their sales pitch) is shameful. Once OverDrive gets the money and has libraries locked into multi-year agreements, where is the motivation for them – or the publishers – to evolve their products and offer the access that library users actually want?