Claudia Weissman from Overdrive talks about audio/ebook commercial solution. Presentation here
Overdrive is incorporated seamlessly into the patron’s city website.
Overdrive lets you burn wma files as CDs. That’s cool.
Adding 50 audio books a year to the library ranging in price from 2-49$
Audio Cliff Notes–holy cow!
Discounts for selling them as audio downloads as opposed to audio cassettes. One audio book example: from 97$ for the CDs to $35 for the audio wma file.
Overdrive: Negotiating BBC, Time-Warner, etc, Music from Naxos (!), video on demand.
This sounds like a good service, and it may make commercial audio books more affordable and easier to share within a library context. On the other hand, it seems better equipped to offer titles from the big publishers than the independents. That is a shortcoming, and a reason why library-funded ebooks/audiobooks may not be used as often as books with archive.org, itconversations, ourmedia where the user is not going through an intermediary. This service may be good for gaining cheap access to a Harry Potter audio book, but not really a big for discovering the next new thing.