The Founding (1986-1995)

Steve Potash co-founded OverDrive in 1986 with his wife Loree, digitizing legal reference materials, converting law books into interactive diskettes and CD-ROMs. A practical solution to a practical problem. His parents were Holocaust survivors. Potash earned his J.D. from Cleveland State University\'s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law and spent years watching lawyers struggle with outdated systems. (Biographical details drawn from Potash\'s 2026 DC Council testimony and public statements.)

The company evolved from serving lawyers to serving libraries. By the 1990s, OverDrive was the standard library software platform. Not because they were the best. They were practical. They solved the problem libraries had right then. They didn't tell libraries what they needed. They listened.

This was the good part. When the company\'s mission actually aligned with libraries" interests.

The Digital Turn (2000-2010)

When ebooks became real (not theoretical, but actual digital files), OverDrive was positioned to own that space. They had relationships with libraries. They had the infrastructure. They had trust.

They standardized EPUB. Potash co-founded the Open eBook Forum (later the IDPF) and helped develop the EPUB standard, pushing the industry toward open standards. This wasn\'t greed; this was smart. Open standards meant vendors couldn\'t hold content hostage to proprietary formats.

For a moment, it looked like OverDrive was going to democratize digital library access.

Then private equity got involved.

The Buyouts (2010-2020)

Insight Venture Partners took a majority stake in OverDrive in 2010. Suddenly the mission shifted from "solve library problems" to "extract maximum revenue from library dependency."

In 2015, Rakuten paid $410 million for OverDrive. One company. $410 million for a platform that had been capturing library market share and data for decades. The valuation wasn't based on how well they served libraries. It was based on how much data they controlled and how locked-in libraries had become.

In 2020, KKR (Kohlberg Kravis Roberts), a massive private equity firm, acquired OverDrive for approximately $775 million (per TechCrunch reporting). KKR's playbook is simple: buy established cash-flow businesses, extract maximum value, optimize for investors, not customers.

Libraries noticed the shift. Support got slower. Features got more expensive. The philosophy changed from "libraries are our partners" to "libraries are our revenue base."

The Platform Ecosystem (2015-2023)

OverDrive built vertical integration. They didn't just control the platform; they expanded into patron apps, reading applications, and adjacent services.

Libby: The patron-facing app. Clean interface. Easy to use. So easy that it became the standard way patrons access OverDrive content. Now OverDrive owns not just the library-facing platform but the patron experience. That's data collection at every touchpoint.

Sora: The school version of Libby. They\'re not just capturing the public library market; they\'re capturing schools. K-12 reading habits, tracked and monetized.

Kanopy: OverDrive acquired this video platform for academic and public libraries. Now they control textual AND visual content distribution.

TeachingBooks: Teacher resources. Lesson plans. Reading guides. They\'re not just distributing content anymore; they\'re capturing educational metadata and instruction patterns.

Every acquisition looks like expansion. It\'s actually consolidation. They\'re not building alternatives. They're eliminating them.

The Economic Models: How They Trap You

OCOU (One Copy, One User): You pay per simultaneous user. Sounds fair. It\'s not. Libraries have to choose: make patrons wait or buy multiple licenses at exponential cost. It\'s a scarcity engine disguised as a business model.

Metered Access: You pay per patron access point over time. Sounds flexible. It\'s actually a data extraction mechanism. They track every single patron interaction and optimize pricing based on usage patterns. If they see you're hitting limits, they raise prices. If they see you're willing to pay, they find more expensive tiers.

CPC (Cost Per Circulation): You pay per checkout. Sounds efficient. It means OverDrive has a vested interest in high circulation. They push bestsellers, popular titles, high-demand content. They don't have any incentive to support diverse, niche, or challenging content that circulates slowly.

OverDrive Max: The premium tier. Unlimited simultaneous users. Sounds great. The cost is prohibitive for most libraries. So Max becomes another luxury tier that solidifies market stratification: rich libraries get unlimited access; poor libraries get rationed.

Simultaneous Access: Libraries pay per concurrent user of a specific title. You own a copy that 5 patrons can read at once. A 6th patron waits. This isn\'t how books work in the physical world. Physical books degrade. Digital books don\'t. But OverDrive charges as if they do.

Every model is designed to maximize revenue extraction while minimizing library autonomy.

The Data Story

OverDrive knows which books patrons check out. When. For how long. Whether they finish them. Their reading patterns. Their interests. Their research topics. Their curiosities.

This is patron data. It\'s not OverDrive\'s to monetize. It belongs to the library, and more importantly, it belongs to the patrons who trust libraries with their intellectual privacy.

But OverDrive treats it like a revenue stream. They\'re B Corp certified, meaning they claim to balance profit and purpose. Yet based on contracts I\'ve reviewed, their terms often restrict libraries' ability to even discuss what OverDrive does with patron data.

Confidentiality clauses. Non-disparagement clauses. Data ownership ambiguity. These aren\'t accident. They\'re strategic.

The Legislative Pushback (2024-2025)

Connecticut passed a law in 2025 prohibiting contract terms that restrict interlibrary loan, limit license purchases, or impose confidentiality clauses preventing libraries from discussing vendor practices publicly.

Connecticut got there because libraries got tired. They watched OverDrive\'s pricing models make digital lending effectively inaccessible for many communities. They watched the artificial scarcity persist. They watched HarperCollins\'s 26-circulation limit (the 2011 moment that taught me to leave) never actually go away.

Steve Potash testified against the bill. The founder who\'d pushed open standards in EPUB, who\'d started with a mission to democratize information access, was now fighting legislation designed to prevent publisher/vendor capture.

He lost. Connecticut passed the law anyway.

The Collapse That Wasn't (Yet)

OverDrive controls an estimated 90% of the digital library market in the United States, according to Library Journal and industry analysts. That\'s not market leadership. That\'s monopoly. And monopolies are fragile because they have no incentive to innovate.

Boundless (Baker & Taylor's digital lending platform) tried to compete. Better pricing. More author-friendly terms. Baker & Taylor shut down operations and Boundless went offline in December 2025.

cloudLibrary exists but is tiny, with single-digit market share.

The Palace Project offers vendor-agnostic access to multiple platforms" content. Open source. Community-driven. They\'re growing but still marginal in a market where OverDrive owns the distribution.

OverDrive\'s market dominance means libraries have no real exit. Switching costs are astronomical. Data portability is unclear. Migration would take years. So libraries stay trapped, paying escalating fees for services that don\'t serve them.

What Happened to the Mission

Steve Potash built a company to solve library problems. Forty years later, OverDrive is the problem.

This isn\'t unique to OverDrive. It\'s the enshittification pattern:

Phase 1: The company solves a real problem. They're genuinely helpful. Libraries adopt them because they work.

Phase 2: The company optimizes for growth. They capture market share. They buy competitors. They expand into adjacent markets.

Phase 3: The company has market dominance. Exit costs are high. Libraries can't leave. Now the company optimizes for extraction instead of service.

Phase 4: The company becomes the problem they were hired to solve.

OverDrive is in Phase 4. And because they own 90% of the market, there\'s no viable alternative for most libraries. They\'re trapped by the very company that was supposed to free them.

The Potash Family Foundation

The Steve and Loree Potash Family Foundation runs Believe in Reading, a grant program that funds literacy initiatives at 501(c)(3) organizations, including public libraries. The foundation says it has funded more than $10 million in literacy programs worldwide. Individual grants peak at $10,000, with first-time recipients capped at $3,000.

That\'s real money for small literacy nonprofits. But it\'s a rounding error against what OverDrive extracts from the library system. Rakuten paid $410 million for OverDrive. KKR paid $775 million. Those valuations were built on library spending. The foundation's $10 million in total giving over its lifetime is about 1.3% of what KKR paid to acquire the company those libraries built.

This is what people call "giving back." It\'s also how you manage the optics when your company\'s revenue depends on the institutions you're claiming to support, while those institutions can\'t afford your pricing tiers.

Where We Are Now

OverDrive is a $775 million company owned by one of the world's largest private equity firms. They control 90% of the digital library market. They have no meaningful competition. Libraries have no meaningful exit.

They've gone from solving the library problem to being the library problem.

And because they own the market, nobody can build an alternative. Why would you enter a market where OverDrive owns 90% of the installed base and all the data relationships?

This is how monopolies work. Not through evil. Through convenience, followed by lock-in, followed by extraction.

I watched it happen from the inside. From the moment Insight bought the company and the mission shifted. From Rakuten\'s acquisition and the data capture acceleration. From KKR\'s PE playbook.

Steve Potash solved a problem in 1986. By 2025, his company had become the problem.

That\'s not a tragedy. It\'s the template. And it plays out exactly the same way every time.