The mid-year numbers are in from OverDrive and once again it’s looking to be a record-breaking year for the Rakuten-owned company.
Last year OverDrive recorded 225 million downloads, with 58 libraries passing the 1 million downloads mark.
This year at the half-way mark 66 libraries are looking to exceed 1 million downloads, with seven libraries on target for 4 million downloads and two libraries expected to exceed 5 million downloads. A further fifteen libraries are said to be “within striking distance” of the million download benchmark.
Overall downloads are up 11%, with the top tier players seeing 20% growth on 2017.
No breakdown here on the balance between ebooks and audiobooks, but last year OverDrive saw 155 million ebook downloads and 68 million audiobook downloads.
Earlier this month it was announced OverDrive was on target to clear 80 million audiobook downloads this year.
While we can’t take the current “on target” numbers as gospel it would appear therefore that, on a back-of-a-napkin calculation, OverDrive is likely to clear a quarter billion downloads this year and around 170 million of those will be ebooks. That’s about 465,000 ebook downloads per day if so.
I’d really like to know how Overdrive pays authors, and what percentage authors receive…
Most “indie authors” go to OverDrive either through an aggregator (Smashwords, StreetLib, PublishDrive, Draft2Digital) or through Kobo Writing Life, part of Kobo, which is owned by the same parent company, Rakuten, that owns OverDrive.
Check out the respective sites for the payments on offer.
For bigger publishers the payout will be different, with a variety of models.