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Official DMB Day, August 3rd, 2013

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The less informed among you may not be aware that this Saturday is DMB Day. It’s an international holiday (celebrated both in Nampa, ID and Surinam). Nampa festivities marking the celebration will include the downtown farmers’ market, the closing of the library, the opening of grocery stores and shops all over town! People Idaho-wide will … Read more Official DMB Day, August 3rd, 2013

Kobo Store Changes: What the #$&*!

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koboFor the many of you who may not have noticed, Kobo books (an entity I have much praised in the past) has made some bizarre changes to their online book store that have me stumped (and hopeful that they are merely hallucinations). No one else online seems to be talking about the chances, so I thought I should. I sent the below letter to feedback@kobo.com and now post it here. I’ll let you know if I hear anything in response!
To Whom it May Concern,
I’m curious as to the recent changes from kobobooks.com to the store.kobobooks.com.
As a reader, the new site has lost considerable usefulness in helping me find and decide upon books to read.
As an author and self-publisher, I’m baffled by several changes that seem to be taking Kobo Books in full reverse. I’m hoping these changes are some sort of temporary stop-gap (or a sick joke). Several things have me stumped:
  1. The disappearance of reviews. I realize Amazon purchased Goodreads. I’m hoping this has not forced Goodreads reviews to be removed. This was one advantage Kobo had over Amazon as many people consider GR reviews more reputable than Amazon ones.
  2. The disappearance of star ratings. Even if the Goodreads reviews had to be dropped, why the star ratings?
  3. The disappearance of most of the curated reading lists. The Indie Next list is still around (even though I’ve never been able to figure out what it means, or what the definition of indie is supposed to be for this list), but the rest of them are gone. Reason?
  4. Lastly, the Free list is gone! And so recently after some positive changes to help more free books to be discoverable on Kobo. Seriously? Now the only way to find free books is to do a search and sort by price? Even if I can find one, there are no reviews, star ratings or even rankings (since free books are put at the bottom) for me to use in deciding whether to read the book or not.
I’m still struggling to establish myself firmly as one of the new generation ebook mid-list authors able to make a living entirely from writing novels. But I’m getting there.

Read moreKobo Store Changes: What the #$&*!