New Jamaican E-Book, Training Center
Calvin Reid -- Publishers Weekly, 6/4/2001
OverDrive, the e-publishing services and technology provider, has expanded its content conversion facilities in Jamaica, opening the new OverDrive Jamaica eBook Technology Center in Montego Bay. The Cleveland, Ohio, firm has also received a grant from the Jamaican government to open a training center for electronic conversion and Internet publishing at the Montego Bay Community College. The facility will provide text conversion work for 200 e-book editors.
Steve Potash, OverDrive CEO, said the new facility was needed to keep up with the "tremendous" growth in demand for text-conversion services. He also noted that OverDrive is one of the first high-tech firms to set up shop in Jamaica. The area's advantages include numerous daily direct flights from the U.S. to Jamaica and a high-quality English-speaking educational system; and Potash noted that Cleveland and Montego Bay are in the same time zone. "Our production crews can work in sync; we can pick up the phone and talk in real time," said Potash.
Potash said the school has constructed a state-of-the-art, 30-workstation computer lab and OverDrive has created a 16-week curriculum in e-book authoring. OverDrive will train the program's instructors and graduates will be offered jobs in the Montego Bay conversion facility.
