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Originally Posted by rcentros
I'm trying to figure out how Overdrive makes money. Selling books to the libraries? Charging their services to the libraries by the book loan?
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They make money by selling eBooks & services to libraires & publishers, charging annual costs for maintenance and the like. By acting as a
distributor for eBook retailers such as BAM who don't maintain their own DRM & content servers. They also have programs they sell to school & college libraries as well...
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And an offshoot question ... does Overdrive pay Amazon to loan the Kindle book versions? Or does Amazon simply offer it as a service to keep people in their ecosystem? And at what point does Overdrive (Kobo) quit offering the service to Amazon (Kindle) books?
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I don't know if Amazon pays OD, if OD pays Amazon or??? AFAIK it costs the library the same if there is a Kindle book or not as the library isn't sold a format other than an "eBook" which then includes whatever format(s) that title is available in be it ePub, PDF, open ePub or Kindle (info from an acquisitions librarian a while back).
Not knowing anything about OD & Amazon's contract with each other it's hard to say if/when things could change. Does OD stop Kindle lending because Rakuten doesn't want a Kobo competitor having a possible advantage in the US? Probably gotta be careful there, more likely Kobo develops/expands their own lending system, plus Kobo has largely gone very passive in the US market which is the only one with Kindle lending.
Does OD use Kindle lending (which is very popular) as leverage to get Amazon to start offering APub eBooks and Brilliance Audio audiobooks (which largely stopped being available around the time OD went DRM free on audio) to libraries???