Follett and OverDrive’s Sora App Partner for Expanded PreK–12 Reach

Follett Content Solutions, the largest provider of children’s and YA print books to the U.S. preK–12 market, and Sora, the award-winning student reading app from OverDrive, are teaming up to provide schools with more streamlined purchasing access to a full range of print and digital materials for their students.

With the new sales collaboration, educators and librarians will eventually be able to discover and purchase Sora digital titles—ebooks, audiobooks, and readalongs—via Titlewave, Follett’s collection development and ordering tool, allowing one-stop shopping for multiple formats. Until all the technological details are worked out by both companies, however, Follett customers will order digital content through Sora.

Though Follett was a corporate pioneer in selling ebooks into the K–12 market 15 years ago, Follett Content CEO Britten Follett noted that more recently, “Ebooks are not necessarily a core competency of ours. To partner with a company where it is their core competency and they deliver a renowned digital experience seems like the right thing to do for educators and students.” Talks with OverDrive about collaborating have taken place over the past several years, but Britten Follett believes that now is the perfect time to officially launch. “Sora is really a stellar product. So rather than attempting to compete against OverDrive, I would much rather have them as a partner alongside us, so we can deliver a fantastic print experience, and they can deliver a fantastic ebook experience, eventually in Titlewave. And together, our joint sales teams can sell both, which to me, is extremely exciting.”

In a statement, Renee Davenport, Sora’s VP of education, added, “By bringing together Follett Content’s respected resources with the digital reading experience in Sora, we’re giving educators and librarians more ways to meet readers where they are. This partnership streamlines their workflow, strengthens their collections, and ultimately supports the goal we care about most—helping every student discover a love of reading.”