Community Reading Event Impact Report
The Panorama Project’s Community Reading Event Impact Report presents findings on the impact of a recent OverDrive Big Library Read (BLR) community reading campaign. With the permission of the publisher and author, a selected title is featured in a Big Library Read digital book club event. For a two-week period, over 14,700 U.S. public library branches feature the title on their ebook home page and in their OverDrive ebook app. During the event, the book may be borrowed immediately (with no wait list) by anyone with a valid library card from a participating library.
First-time author Jennifer McGaha’s Flat Broke With Two Goats (Sourcebooks, 2018) was selected for the April 2018 BLR event. The data analyzed by the project shows that the selection and promotion of the title for the April 2–16, 2018 campaign aligns with significant increases in associated social media activity and retail print/ebook sales.
Discovery Impact from the Campaign
5.6 million page views globally of the ebook title details page in public library digital catalogs.
An increase in title’s Amazon Kindle sales rank—from below 200,000 prior to the library ebook club campaign to 7,833 at the close of the event.
Brand Development Impact from the Campaign
Over 13,000 Goodreads additions for the title during the campaign.
400+ comments from readers, librarians, the author, and OverDrive forum moderator on the OverDrive moderated title discussion board.
500+ mentions from libraries and readers on social media sites using #BigLibraryRead.
Retail Sales Impact from the Campaign
818% growth in ebook sales from March to April, 2018.
201% growth in print sales from March to April, 2018.
Sustained retail sales above pre-campaign (January–March 2018) volumes:
April–June 2018 ebook sales continued at 720% above pre-campaign volumes.
April–June 2018 print sales continued at 38% percent above pre-campaign volumes.
Data was aggregated from a number of sources to obtain the most holistic view possible of all library and retail sales activity (print and ebook) across multiple channels. The data sources include U.S. retail data from The NPD Group’s DecisionKey® retail book sales tracking service (formerly Bookscan™), U.S. public library ebook circulation data provided by OverDrive, and U.S. sales and marketing data from the publisher. In addition to sales data we have aggregated and incorporated promotional activities known to have been undertaken independently by OverDrive and Sourcebooks.
View/Download the Report (PDF)