In an effort to expand its customer base outside the U.S., the e-book aggregator OverDrive has signed up some new content partners. The company reports today that it has added 1,700 international booksellers, publishers and libararies to its network – existing partners included Borders.com, BarnesAndNoble.com and WHSmith.co.uk.
But it is unclear whether those numbers actually translate into any kind of financial success. Taking a page from Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN), the company declines to reveal any details on subscriber numbers or revenues from either content partners or consumers.
OverDrive says its partnerships now bring its total catalog up to 400,000 digital books. New online retailers include Australia’s Read Without Paper, Livraria Cultura in Brazil, Txtr in Germany, InfiBeam in Inida, Digitalbok in Norway and Books on Board in the UK. International publishers added to the OverDrive stable include iMinds in Australia, ChineseAll and Penguin Canada.
While it won’t give out numbers for its commercial partners, David Burleigh, the company’s marketing director, tells me that next week it will release some stats around usage of its library service, which now features a selection of books from 10,000 institutions. OverDrive currently works on Windows-based tablets, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) products, the Sony (NYSE: SNE) Reader, nook and Android devices. Publishers sell ebooks through OverDrive, and the company gets a cut of those sales; it declined to provide details of those revenue-share agreements. It also works with retailers to distribute e-books with them.
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