Thursday, July 12, 2012

Extend your catalog with OverDrive Read and Streaming Audiobooks

See Book, Read Book. For the past several weeks that’s been the mantra at OverDrive. It's a vision of simplicity—an idea that drove us to develop easier ways to get more readers in front of the books they love to read and want to buy. Later this year, we'll be delivering two new services that will extend publisher catalogs to more readers on a wide range of devices: OverDrive Read and streaming audiobooks.

OverDrive Read
OverDrive Read is our browser-based eBook reading experience. It's built using HTML5, which offers flexibility in both use and implementation. For publishers and retailers, OverDrive Read is a brandable platform. We can build custom menus, embed OverDrive Read in branded web pages, and deliver customized social features.

OverDrive Read also allows booksellers, authors, and publishers to embed eBook samples in any page on the web. From those samples, readers can purchase full access to the title from various independent, local and national booksellers. OverDrive Read also features comprehensive social integration, extending your catalogs to the worldwide community of readers.

As an OverDrive publishing partner, your EPUB content is already compatible with OverDrive Read. If you have questions, please contact our Publisher Partner Services team.

As an OverDrive retail partner, be sure to check back soon or get in touch with the Retail Partner Services team. We will have more information about the ways OverDrive Read can support your retail services in the near future.

Streaming Audiobooks
As part of our upcoming Next Generation Digital Library Platform, we announced last month that we would be introducing audiobook streaming as part of our mobile application, OverDrive Media Console. This exciting development will give us the opportunity to offer WMA audiobook titles across a wider range of devices.

Streaming audiobooks also provide another avenue to increase discovery. We will be integrating the streaming service into our upcoming OverDrive Media Station, giving library patrons the opportunity to sample audiobooks within the library. OverDrive Media Station features our powerful recommendation engine, displaying related titles based on a reader’s search results.

We will provide more information about our streaming audiobook service as we get closer to launch. If you're interested in extending the reach of your audiobook catalog, contact our Publisher Partner Services team.

A morbid Python script

Comics #493 and #893 involve actuarial tables, which are tables for calculating the probability that someone of a given age will die within a given amount of time.

One evening, when I was feeling morbid, I wrote a Python script to calculate death probabilities for any collection of people: actuary.py (.txt). It takes a list of ages and genders and produces various statistics. Here’s the report for the nine living people who have walked on the moon:

~$ python actuary.py 81m 82m 80m 81m 80m 81m 76m 78m 77m  There is a 5% chance of someone dying within 0.08 years (by 2012).  There is a 50% chance of someone dying within 1.1 years (by 2013).  There is a 95% chance of someone dying within 4.08 years (by 2016).    There is a 5% chance of everyone dying within 10.78 years (by 2023).  There is a 50% chance of everyone dying within 16.12 years (by 2028).  There is a 95% chance of everyone dying within 22.57 years (by 2035).    Probability of all dying in 1.0 year: <0.001%  Probability of a death within 1.0 year: 46.32%

And here’s the table for four of the main stars of the original Star Wars (Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hammill, James Earl Jones):

~$ python actuary.py 69m 55f 60m 81m 10  There is a 5%  chance of someone dying within 0.42 years (by 2012).  There is a 50% chance of someone dying within 4.74 years (by 2017).  There is a 95% chance of someone dying within 12.83 years (by 2025).    There is a 5%  chance of everyone dying within 18.17 years (by 2030).  There is a 50% chance of everyone dying within 31.28 years (by 2043).  There is a 95% chance of everyone dying within 42.62 years (by 2055).    Probability of all dying in 10.0 years:   0.272%  Probability of a death within 10.0 years: 85.94%

Of course, these are based on average death rates based only on age and gender. Adding more specific information about the people in question will refine the calculation. For example, I’d guess former astronauts are more likely to be in good health—and have longer life expectancies—than the rest of us.