As we all know ebooks are yesterday’s format thanks to screen fatigue and Netflix, and audiobook numbers are through the roof. Or rather, we have been told this so many times some might actually have started to believe it.

It was back in January of this year that TNPS reported on OverDrive’s 2019 numbers, which as every other year since nineteen-bow-an-arrow had set new records. 2019 saw a total of 326 million downloads from OverDrive’s global digital library network.

Of course they were all audiobooks, because as we all know ebooks are yesterday’s format thanks to screen fatigue, and audiobook numbers arre through the roof.

Or rather, we have been told this many times that some might actually have started to believe it. But the reality was that, even in digital libraries where there is no price friction between ebook and audiobooks, audiobooks accounted for “only” 114 million of those 2019 downloads. Ebooks? Try 211 million.

OverDrive demolishes the nonsense that readers have abandoned ebooks for audiobooks as 2019 breaks records for both, adding to uncertainty about Kobo's future

This year, with a full month still to go, 2020 has already left the 2019 total in the dust. Per OverDrive’s announcement:

2020 is on pace to once again set records in ebooks and audiobooks borrowed on Libby and across all OverDrive platforms. Through the first 11 months of 2020, 366 million ebook and audiobooks have been checked out from public libraries worldwide —a 30% increase from 2019. The fastest-growing genres are children’s fiction (including picture books) and nonfiction, young adult fiction and nonfiction as well as comics and graphic novels.

Presumably we won’t be told the ebook/audiobook breakdown until the final report in January. Expect full detail on that here at TNPS as soon as the numbers are available.

Meanwhile, head over to the OverDrive blog to see the Top 10 Ebooks Checked Out from Public Libraries Worldwide in 2020, the Top 10 Audiobooks Checked Out from Public Libraries Worldwide in 2020, the Top 10 Fiction Ebooks & Audiobooks (Released in 2020) Checked Out from Public Libraries Worldwide in 2020, the Top 10 Nonfiction Ebooks & Audiobooks (Released in 2020) Checked Out from Public Libraries Worldwide in 2020, and the Top 10 Juvenile & Young Adult Ebooks & Audiobooks Checked Out from Public Libraries Worldwide in 2020.

A reminder here that OverDrive, based in the US, supplies over 50,000 libraries across 78 countries.