TeachingBooks joins OverDrive—offering more fabulous connections to books and reading.
Exciting news! TeachingBooks has joined OverDrive, the world’s leading digital reading platform for libraries and schools. With this partnership, we are so excited to build upon the TeachingBooks vision and expand opportunities that enrich and deepen everyone’s connections to children’s and young adult books.
In the future, we will develop impactful integrations with the Sora and Libby reading apps, and OverDrive’s Marketplace, empowering readers with resources during the very moment they are reading a book.
In the meantime, rest assured that this acquisition will not impact the access, setup, support, or content that TeachingBooks is providing you. We are fully operating as we have in the past, so please keep using, sharing, and enjoying the TeachingBooks service throughout your community.
Stated another way, TeachingBooks remains a stand-alone resource. Same team. Same service. Same business name, business address, and same Federal Tax ID. We are here to keep doing all we can to personalize everyone’s relationships to books and authors!
A Q&A is below, but before I get to that, I’d like to take a moment to say thank you. I started TeachingBooks 21 years ago with a dream of empowering every reader to connect to and learn from the author the moment they are reading a book. Since 2000, I have been extremely fortunate to learn and collaborate with professionals throughout this marvelous world of schools, libraries, and education. I have had extraordinary colleagues, loved every moment, and can’t wait to continue this journey together. And the best news about this merger is that our determination, focus, and commitment to personalize reading for all is stronger and more poised for meaningful impact than ever before.
Steve Potash, the founder and CEO of OverDrive shared, “OverDrive’s Marketplace, the largest catalog of digital books for student reading programs, combined with TeachingBooks’ vast catalog of supplemental materials, provides educators and librarians a single source for both assigned curriculum and self-selected reading.”
It will be amazing to develop this Sora, Libby, TeachingBooks partnership.
Nick Glass
Founder & Head
TeachingBooks and Book Connections
nick@TeachingBooks.net
A few pertinent details in this Question & Answer section.
Q: What happened? What does ‘TeachingBooks joins OverDrive’ mean?
A: TeachingBooks was acquired by OverDrive so that we can most impactfully merge digital books and digital resources.
Q: Is anything changing with TeachingBooks?
A: TeachingBooks remains a stand-alone service, dedicated to personalizing and deepening everyone’s connections to children’s and young adult books. We remain as committed to our mission, goals, and diversity, equity, and inclusion collection focus as we always have.
Q: Do I need to have Sora and TeachingBooks?
A: Sora and TeachingBooks remain separate products. You can license either one separately, yet we anticipate once the integrations are built you’ll probably want to have both because they will be even more spectacular and impactful than ever before.
Q: Is TeachingBooks’ fabulous staff still going to be with TeachingBooks?
A: Yes. Nick Glass remains the founder and head of this service, with 100% of the TeachingBooks team remaining. We are all excited about continuing and expanding upon this work with our new OverDrive partners.
Q: We have a license with TeachingBooks and Sora. Can we merge those and only pay once for both products?
A: TeachingBooks and Sora are independent products. You continue to license TeachingBooks from TeachingBooks, and Sora from OverDrive.
Q: When will we see integrations between Sora and TeachingBooks. Sounds so fabulous, so I can’t wait!
A: Thank you. We too are excited about merging the digital books and resources into the OverDrive and TeachingBooks platforms. A timeline has not yet been determined, and until then it is “business as usual”.
Q: Is there a formal press release and/or media about this acquisition?
A: The press release is on the OverDrive website, and Publishers Weekly wrote a nice article about it too.
Q: I still have questions about this acquisition.
A: Freely reach out to Nick Glass at TeachingBooks, and your account manager or David Burleigh at OverDrive.
Very exciting! I am looking forward to it. My district currently uses both teaching books and Sora, so it will greatly benefit our teachers and students!