VIZ & Overdrive to provide digital manga to U.S. & Canadian libraries

Vampire Knight © Matsuri Hino 2004/HAKUSENSHA, Inc.

VIZ MEDIA PARTNERS WITH OVERDRIVE TO PROVIDE

POPULAR DIGITAL MANGA TITLES TO LIBRARIES

Acclaimed VIZ Media Manga Series Available For Digital Lending

At Participating Libraries With Leading eBook Platform

VIZ Media has announced an agreement with OverDrive to provide a wide variety of its most popular digital manga (graphic novel) titles at participating libraries in the U.S. and Canada.

OverDrive is a leading digital distribution platform, supplying the industry’s largest catalog of eBooks, audiobooks, streaming video and periodicals to 34,000 libraries, schools and retailers worldwide, including 90 percent of all public libraries in the U.S.

For the initial manga offerings, OverDrive will feature several popular and award-winning VIZ Media titles such as NARUTO, DEADMAN WONDERLAND, VAMPIRE KNIGHT, and NEON GENESIS EVANGELION that will be carried by participating libraries on a digital lending basis. The catalog of available manga titles will continue to expand with new series to be added throughout the year; the full list of titles now available may be viewed at www.overdrive.com/publishers/vizmedia.

“OverDrive’s digital platform offers an innovative, cloud-based and fully scalable channel to offer a diverse selection of age-appropriate digital manga content to library patrons and our partnership with the company will ensure that users have access to some of the most popular titles from the VIZ Media catalog,” says Kevin Hamric, Senior Director, Publishing Sales & Marketing, VIZ Media.

“VIZ Media is a proven leader in manga publishing and we are very excited to add some of their most popular series to our service,” says Karen Estrovich, Director, Collection Development at OverDrive. “OverDrive delivers a large catalog combined with intuitive, easy to use eReading apps. Manga continues to be one of the most popular categories at libraries and we invite readers to discover all of the exciting new VIZ Media titles with our service.”

For more information on VIZ Media manga titles, please visit www.VIZ.com.