For digital library platform Hoopla Digital, 2016 was a good year—and 2017 looks to be off to a strong start. This week Hoopla officials announced new content deals with publishers including Abrams, Britannica Digital Learning, The Quarto Group, Sourcebooks, and Lonely Planet, as well as the addition of hundreds more publishers through its deal with Ingram’s CoreSource Plus service, Independent Publishers Group (IPG), and eBOUND Canada.
The deals will see thousands of new e-books and audiobooks added in 2017 to Hoopla's current library of more than 600,000 titles in music, movies, TV shows, e-books, audiobooks, and comics. And, says Jeff Jankowski, owner and founder of Hoopla Digital, momentum for the service among publishers is building with each new deal.
“The growth and the metrics we are demonstrating with publishers and other content owners is fueling new content deals, and more are in the works.” Jankowski said, adding that the platform has seen significant user and circulation growth since the launch of its e-book vertical last year. In fact, “publishing verticals are now Hoopla's strongest growth area,” Jankowski added, with circulation of publishing content more than doubling over the past year, and more than 70% of publisher titles on the Hoopla Digital platform being checked out by patrons.
Unlike the dominant “one copy/one user” digital lending model used in libraries, Hoopla’s service is based on a multi-user “transactional” model. With Hoopla Digital, a service of Midwest Tape, e-books and audio titles are instantly available for borrowing to anyone with a valid library card at a participating library, 24/7—and every time a title is borrowed, the publisher gets paid. For library patrons, that means immediate access to thousands of e-books, audiobooks, and comics (as well as movies, TV shows, and music). Plus there's no waiting on holds lists.
In 2016, Hoopla announced a number of major deals with new partners, including Ingram’s CoreSource Plus, and HarperCollins, which now offers its entire digital audiobook backlist via Hoopla's streaming service.
In a release, Harper chief digital officer and international executive v-p, Chantal Restivo-Alessi, said Harper has “seen a terrific response” to that program. “We want the broadest possible distribution for the work of our authors,” Restivo-Alessi said, “and Hoopla Digital has been able to provide incremental reach.”
Marcus Woodburn, v-p of digital products at Ingram Content Group, added that CoreSource Plus publishers using Hoopla are also seeing growth.
“Hoopla’s innovative model has clearly filled a void in the established library models,” Woodburn said.
