Kobo Books: Recommended Reading Lists

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Kobo Books Reading ListsI’ve tracked www.Kobobooks.com for several weeks now, keeping my eye on the following things:

  • rankings
  • recommended reading lists
  • search and sort capabilities
  • customer service
  • the writing life platform
  • the app, the eReader, etc.

My intent has been to deduce whether Kobo seems to understand what it will take to become a serious player in the eBook retail universe currently dominated almost exclusively by Amazon and their Kindle store. My perspective is unabashedly that of an indie author. Today’s post will discuss Kobo’s recommending reading lists. (Follow the linked bullet points for the other posts.)

Results: Recommended Reading Lists

Depending on how you arrive at the kobo store (none of this applies to the kobo application) the left bar will look slightly different. But all configurations include some variation of “browse by category” lists, “Recommended Reading” lists and “Today’s Top Fifty” (top 50 bestseller’s list).

The category lists take you to the same genre lists we’ve already explored. The top fifty is just that, and it is refreshed on a daily basis as advertised. This list appears to be where the vast majority of Kobo shoppers shop.

The “Recommended Reading” lists seem to be an integral part of what Kobo is trying to do to court both readers and publishers. But I found their methods rather disappointing and their results even more so.

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Kobo Books: Kitten or Lion?

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Kobo's Top 50 RankingsI’ve tracked www.Kobobooks.com for five weeks now, keeping my eye on the following things:

  • rankings
  • recommending reading lists
  • search and sort capabilities
  • customer service
  • the writing life platform
  • the app, the eReader, etc.

My intent has been to deduce whether Kobo seems to understand what it will take to become a serious player in the eBook retail universe currently dominated almost exclusively by Amazon and their Kindle store. My perspective is unabashedly that of an indie author.

I’ll do my best to breakdown each of the above bullet points in a series of four posts. I’ll provide my observations/data and give my personal opinion whether Kobo is currently taking a kitten stance, or lion. Today we’ll deal with Kobo’s rankings.

The Results: Rankings

Kobo appears to have two sets of connected rankings. From any product page consumers are given rankings for said product for each of the product’s listed genres (the Writing Life platform allows publishers to select up to three). These rankings are slow to change and only reflect the general rank rather than exact.

By clicking on the actual genre, Men’s Adventure in this case, you will be directed to the Men’s Adventure genre list sorted according to “Best Sellers” (you can also sort by price, rating and title). If a product is rated #83 on the product page this indicates that the product will be specifically ranked somewhere below #83 and above whatever the next selected breakpoint may be (possibly somewhere around #120). Once the product slips below #120 it would then be ranked #120 on the product page.

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