OverDrive: “The romantasy trend showed up years ago”
In the lead-up to the 2026 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs), Books+Publishing is inviting the event’s major sponsors to share little-known facts about their organisations, their top tips for booksellers and publishers, and their thoughts on the state of our industry. This week, OverDrive regional manager for Australia and New Zealand Malcolm O’Brien writes on several key ways the company links publishers with libraries and schools.
This segment is supported by the event sponsors.
Spotlighting authors at public libraries
OverDrive Australia brings people together over great distances – over books.
We’re currently running 3 online book clubs for public libraries on the Libby app every month.
The clubs run on weeknights on the east and west coasts of Australia and across all of Aotearoa New Zealand.
The featured books and authors are all from Australia and/or Aotearoa New Zealand, and the authors are often new writers looking to build an audience after releasing a debut book.
OverDrive has negotiated a digital lending model with publishers to allow libraries to lend the featured books simultaneously through the month when they are featured, and the event culminates with a live interview on Zoom where people can interact in real time with the author.
The end result is thousands of new readers discovering authors for the first time, leading to increased sales of both print and digital copies of the featured book – and often the author’s backlist as well.
The publishers’ agreements to change library lending models has also allowed libraries to promote a range of Australian and Aotearoa authors in a variety of other ways.
Whether it’s a writers’ festival, an award or a national reading promotion, libraries can use this change to lend the books and audiobooks of authors they are promoting to patrons, on demand, digitally and instantly.
This allows libraries to participate more effectively in the Australian publishing world, without frustrating their readers and creating a demand they can’t meet.
Reviving out-of-print texts for schools
With publisher permission, schools can now get digital class sets for their key texts loaded directly onto student reading app Sora at an affordable price.
Teachers can allocate copies to students, add study notes and track reading progress for the period allocated to the study of the book.
Even if the text is out of print or unavailable (as can be the case with many set curriculum texts), schools can still access these texts for their class whenever they need them.
Through Sora, we can also connect students to their public libraries to borrow age-appropriate content, broadening their options well beyond what’s assigned to them each term.
We support learning beyond schools, as well. For instance, we support the academic market, offering individual title purchasing in the lending models that these institutions prefer.
We also support collections for corporate and specialist libraries across the Asia-Pacific region including small, charity-focused and niche libraries that work with a wide range of specialised subject areas.
Digitising books to reach new readers
OverDrive Australia has also implemented digital publishing partnerships with publishers in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.
Over the last 2 years, we have identified a number of books that were in demand digitally but had not yet been digitised. In these cases, we collaborate with the publisher to digitise the book and, depending on rights, we can then sell the book to libraries and schools around the world. (The publisher retains the retail rights and ownership of the book.)
Predicting the future
Emerging genre trends often show up in libraries first. Through social media messaging and sharing, demand is created and reflected through requests to libraries for books and authors that people want to read – or listen to.
In fact, and as an example, the current romantasy trend showed up years ago in public libraries – and firstly in audiobooks. The explosion in interest then spread to the trade and created demand for more and more titles – leading to more and more sales.
Bringing the classics to a new generation
While the same books on the current bestseller lists are also being borrowed in libraries, classic backlist titles like the Harry Potter series, Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice are often “discovered” by a new generation of readers at their school or public library.
Our loan patterns and patron requests indicate that more and more young people are accessing books for the first time on Sora at school and then Libby in their community.
Digital reading and listening discovery through libraries are now being recognised as a crucial part of the creation of the next generation of readers here in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.
The Australian Book Industry Awards are presented for achievements in bringing Australian books to readers.
Books+Publishing is the Australian book industry’s number-one source for news, opinions, pre-publication reviews, jobs, and advertisements.
Category: ABIA
