Kobo Archives - Page 2 of 5 - David Mark Brown

Kobo Store Changes: What the #$&*!

October 10, 2013July 10, 2013 by David Mark Brown

For 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:

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.
The disappearance of star ratings. Even if the Goodreads reviews had to be dropped, why the star ratings?
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?
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.

Kobo Books: App and Readers

September 24, 2012 by David Mark Brown

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

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 the Kobo app the eReaders and other random junk. (Follow the linked bullet points for the other posts.)

The Results: Application and Readers

For my final post on my Kobo Books experiment there is a handful of random stuff worth commenting on. First, the application. I read digital content on my iPad, so I am able to use every application in a fairly neutral setting. Sure, iBooks is native to my device and I end up using it more than I would normally due to that fact. iBooks has a great aesthetic and feel to it, but the limitations of the iBooks store keeps me from using it more. Mostly I use it for opening certain .pdf files.

Kobo Books: Writing Life Platform

September 18, 2012September 17, 2012 by David Mark Brown

Kobo Writing Life Dashboard I’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 Writing Life Platform. (Follow the linked bullet points for the other posts.)

The Results: Writing Life

Props to Kobo. Their new Writing Life spanks Barnes and Nobles’ PubIt! with both hands. I would go so far as saying Kobo’s platform matches Amazon’s KDP. It is early on, and thus Writing Life is not as advanced. But the next iteration could combine many of the abilities of Amazon’s Author Central and KDP into a single source.