In an market dominated by Amazon’s Kindle, e-reader manufacturer Kobo—once aligned with Borders, RIP—has thrown in its lot with independent bookstores by way of a recent partnership with the nearly 2,000 bookstores-strong American Booksellers Association (ABA). Today Powell’s announced that they’ll be selling Kobo e-readers in-store: the Kobo Glo for $130, and the Kobo Mini for $90. According to this morning’s press release, Kobo’s catalog offers “nearly three million eBook titles” (though their math seems a little fuzzy—I think they’re counting newspapers and magazines in that number) and the readers support mobi, epub, and pdf. It’s unclear how (or if) one will purchase Kobo books directly through Powell’s—there aren’t any e-book links on powells.com, though the ABA says its “members will also be able to offer ebooks directly to their customers online” and “will share in the revenue on every sale.” (I’ve got an email to ask about this; in the meantime, here’s a comment thread wondering the same thing.)
UPDATE, Fri 4:29 pm: Powell’s spokesperson Kim Sutton says: “Our partnership with Kobo is arranged similar to all of our former eBook distribution agreements where we receive a percentage of eBook sales. At this time, our customers must link to Kobo from the Powells.com site in order to purchase eBooks. That link can be found at the top of this page: http://www.powells.com/ebooks.”
Despite the indie bookstore angle, Kobo isn’t exactly your friendly neighborhood e-reader—the Toronto-based company was purchased in January by Japanese e-commerce heavyweight Rakuten, which is also heavily invested in Pinterest . From a Techcrunch article earlier this year:
Rakuten has holdings that extend well beyond Japan, and include properties like Buy.com in the U.S., Kobo e-reader and e-books, Priceminister in France—in all, operations based in 10 countries and extending to 17 countries in total. [CEO Hiroshi] Mikitani says that he is hopeful that the kinds of groundwork it wants to lay in Japan will also be extended to the rest of its footprint.
For example, Mikitani points out that Kobo already has a “great partnership” with Facebook to encourage people to post excerpts and read more using Kobo, which it would like to extend to Pinterest, too: “Facebook is why Kobo is growing so fast right now,” he says. “We will see more of Kobo in Pinterest, too, I think.”
So with a Kobo, rather than signing up with Amazon, you’re basically signing up with the Japanese Amazon—and yep, you’ll still have to deal with DRM, though there are ways around that. Still, if you’re wanting both an e-reader and a way to support Powell’s, this looks like your way to do it. Wired recently reviewed the Glo, calling it “very good, but not quite great.”
If anyone has any further insight into what this means for Powell’s, please chime in in the comments.
That update seems weird. Isn’t it actually that if you create your Kobo account via the link Powell’s gives, your Kobo purchases automatically credit Powell’s? That’s what the site copy suggests, as opposed to needing to click through from powells.com for every purchase.
Rakuten is also the somewhat scummy conglomerate behind Linkshare, one of those ever-so-lovely affiliate link advertising go-betweens. That alone would be enough for me to mistrust Kobo (my experiences with Linkshare have been awful), but let’s go ahead and admit that Kobo is a distant 4th place behind Amazon, B&N, and Apple in the ebook market – possibly even Sony. And what should THAT matter? Digital Rights Management. If you’re into ebooks, but them from someone that you trust will still be around in 5 years. You’ll be glad you did.
b!x, I got clarification on that from Sutton:
“[S]etting up the account via Powells.com won’t permanently link the customer to Powell’s, so if a person wanted to continue supporting us, they’d need to use the link every time, similar to most affiliate programs. It is our plan to eventually integrate the links into product pages and make it easier for customers to buy ebooks while browsing Powells.com. And this functionality really applies to people who already have an eReader and who simply want to buy eBooks.
If someone purchases a Kobo device at Powell’s, they can shop eBooks directly on their device and those purchases will be linked to Powell’s. Device purchasers do not need to use the link on powells.com.”