Amazon convinced the New York City Department of Education to give it $30 million to sell ebooks
Amazon’s got a soft spot for New York in that empty Minion box it calls a heart. Late last year, they hinted that they might open up a store in Manhattan, though it turned out… Read more »
Japanese company that owns Kobo buys OverDrive for $410 million
Insight Venture Partners, OverDrive’s majority shareholder since 2010, has reached a $410 million dollar deal with Rakuten, a Japan-based digital content company, to purchase OverDrive, the main distributor that libraries use… Read more »
Major literary holidays other than Read an eBook Day
Americans take their holidays seriously. Just look at the orgy of barbecuing that occurs on Labor Day, the orgy of turkey consumption that occurs on Thanksgiving, or the orgy of… Read more »
Librarians confess all!
The role of librarian comes with a strange moral burden attached — maybe it’s just the effect of hoary old stereotypes, or the fact that the job description demands a certain… Read more »
Penguin + Overdrive: Together Again
Aaaaaaaand they’re back! Nearly two years after Penguin pulled its books from OverDrive, and a year and some months after they signed on with e-book distribution competitor 3M, OverDrive has… Read more »
What will the “Big Library Read” reveal about the potential for ebook marketing in libraries?
At the American Library Association’s Midwinter Meeting in January 2013, Eric Hellman, the founder of GlueJar, a start-up devoted to relicensing ebooks under the Creative Commons license, presented an idea… Read more »
Simon & Schuster announce new ebook lending program for libraries
Simon and Schuster, launched long ago in 1924 on the back of the very first, and bestselling, crossword puzzle book, is the newest in a line of publishers who’ve recently… Read more »
Penguin’s lending e-books, again
Penguin is back in the e-book lending game again. Sort of. After removing its titles from Overdrive in November 2011, Penguin has just announced that it is partnering with the… Read more »
How librarians should talk to patrons about Penguin … and not OverDrive
While noting “Penguin did NOT stop doing business with libraries. They stopped doing business with OverDrive,” librarian Bobbi Newman, at her Librarian By Day blog, nonetheless provides scripts for librarians about… Read more »
Libraries respond to Penguin, and it’s not pretty
Fallout continues over Penguin’s decision to terminate its contract with library ebook distributor OverDrive — an action that meant its ebooks would not be available for libraries. As we noted in… 11 / Read more »