Touch Japanese Launch not going well

[murg]

Originally Posted by hidari

Another problem.... Rakuten is a huge company...Maybe the Kobo is not high on their list of priorities... i.e... Sony would rather make profit on films or TVs or computers than on ebook readers...much more profit....Profits in ereaders may not be that high for big companies....

I think that this is not the case. Well mostly.

Rakuten bought Kobo for good reasons, and is assuming that Kobo management is doing their jobs. So, Rakuten is leaving Kobo alone to do the technology.

Now that Rakuten (hmmm what's a nice way to put it?) has been hoisted by its own petard, you may see Rakuten take a stronger interest in the inner workings of Kobo, especially the technology end.

One has to assume that Rakuten bought Kobo to go into competition with Amazon. At least in Japan, if not the rest of the world. Kobo has just handed the Japanese market to Amazon, if they can move fast enough to get a product out before Rakuten can fix their product and their reputation.

[Xennex1170]

Reading the Japanese pages, I am getting the impression that the ones that are satisfied with the reader itself are still finding that the selection is REALLY small and would like more books to choose from. They are also complaining the the search function at the kobo site has not been optimized for searching using non-western character sets which usually use no spaces within a short phrase. Hearing about all the problems users that have upgraded to 2.0.0 are having make me feel that much luckier I haven't had the chance to update my reader yet having been in Japan w/o a good Internet connection to upgrade over. I had planned earlier to upgrade on returning from my month long work trip but now I think I'll hold off and stay on .17 till they release some fixes. :P

[murg]

Originally Posted by Xennex1170

They are also complaining the the search function at the kobo site has not been optimized for searching using non-western character sets which usually use no spaces within a short phrase.

As far as I can tell, Kobo's search isn't optimised for English, either.

[Xennex1170]

Originally Posted by murg

As far as I can tell, Kobo's search isn't optimised for English, either.

*grin* Point well taken..

I was just exploring the Rakuten-Kobo site and I have to admit I have not seen any commercial webpage so unfinished and unpolished EVER! There were many pages that had "[line break]" or "[delete this]" mixed with all the Japanese text. It's as if they launched the product THEN decided to translate all the pages copied from the English Kobo.com site to use for Rakuten.kobo.com. Maybe I should go and ask them for a part time job localizing their website. The intro videos are all still in English. As a Kobo Touch owner I'm a bit disappointed.

[Alissa]

I'm a Japanese speaker living in Japan and got KT from Rakuten on the launch day. I have read many product comments, reviews, and other blog posts on it. Although my own experience was not so bad, I need to say some large number of first KT users in Japan appear not satisfied.

It's sad.

[Solicitous]

Originally Posted by Jaden

Well... just as I thought... If you want to sell well in Japan you have to aim for perfection. And the current Kobo Touch firmware is not perfect at all.

Hope they will strive to resolve the problems very soon and will stop to release "half-cooked" firmware...

Fix bugs first, release a stable version, then (if you must) add new features (marketing tools like all that Facebook and Discover stuff...).

I honestly don't think aiming for perfection is the issue. From the ramblings I have read the issue was mostly because people bought a Kobo, went home and had issues downloading the software and registering the device. Without setting up a Kobo account and registering the device it is useless and cannot be used.

Doesn't matter what country. If Apple release a new iPhone today and had iTunes authentication issues and those who bought the new phone were left with an expensive electronic device which they could only turn on, look at the registration screen and turn off again....it would be a launch failure. If Amazon released the Kindle in to Japan and only 30% of people could register and setup the device....fail.

Anyway as a side note why hasn't any ereader had a connection with goodreads? Facebook seems the rage. Personally I don't and never have used facebook but I doubt not one of your 756 friends care what book you are reading, but those following you on goodreads do. Imagine Pulse linked in with goodreads? Then you'd not be just discussing with the limited people who use Pulse/Kobo but the greater reading community who use goodreads and read via any device/paperback.

[hidari]

Originally Posted by Alissa

I'm a Japanese speaker living in Japan and got KT from Rakuten on the launch day. I have read many product comments, reviews, and other blog posts on it. Although my own experience was not so bad, I need to say some large number of first KT users in Japan appear not satisfied.

It's sad.

nice hair cut and interesting to hear from a real KT owner in Japan.... I have too many readers to buy another at the moment.....Membokunai....

[murg]

Originally Posted by Solicitous

Doesn't matter what country. If Apple release a new iPhone today and had iTunes authentication issues and those who bought the new phone were left with an expensive electronic device which they could only turn on, look at the registration screen and turn off again....it would be a launch failure.

Naw. The Apple droids would still claim it was a success.

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by Solicitous

I honestly don't think aiming for perfection is the issue. From the ramblings I have read the issue was mostly because people bought a Kobo, went home and had issues downloading the software and registering the device. Without setting up a Kobo account and registering the device it is useless and cannot be used.

Which is a part of "imperfection" - something that doesn't work can't be called perfect.

But what I meant to say was that the Japanese in general are more technically advanced and very selective. Once the firmware works at all, they might still be very critical about the functionality.

Anyway as a side note why hasn't any ereader had a connection with goodreads? [...]

Sounds like a much better idea than Facebook. Even in "marketing sense" because people on goodreads are sure to be interested in books - not just in "Facebook".

[murg]

Originally Posted by Jaden

Which is a part of "imperfection" - something that doesn't work can't be called perfect.

Yes it can. As in: a perfect pile of C..p

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by murg

Yes it can. As in: a perfect pile of C..p

Hmm... though you must admit that a perfect pile of cr*p is normally working exactly as it was planned. :P

[murg]

Actually, it just sort of lays there...

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by murg

Actually, it just sort of lays there...

Indeed it does. Like it's supposed to. And attract flies... oh, and much more... but let's better stop talking about it before it gets too disgusting.

[camtosh]

A Japanese friend bought one and is disappointed in the lack of titles to buy, so I told him about Calibre and sideloading. Any sources for Japanese epubs out there?

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by camtosh

A Japanese friend bought one and is disappointed in the lack of titles to buy, so I told him about Calibre and sideloading. Any sources for Japanese epubs out there?

I don't know of any, but that doesn't mean they aren't out there. I tried working with a friend of mine (native and lives there) to do a short story translation of one of my works, but translations are such a HUGE amount of work...and humor ... or fantasy themes are probably the hardest to translate. I think the short story market might be good in Japan as I know they have a couple of fairly successful short story magazines. Magazines in general are popular over there from what I've seen. Well, it's been years since I was there, so perhaps that has changed.

All this is interesting because Kobo is also launching their "upload" works (The equivalent of Amazon's upload your work dashboard). It's not in bad shape, but CS is slow to respond and when they do, at least in my case, they aren't sure of the answers. I was leery of using yet another uploader and having to keep track of pricing and formatting and whatnot on it, but in general it went smoothly. I think it will be better than going through Smashwords, although currently there's still a disconnect in the search for getting everything to show up right...

I'd like to say it's growing pains, but they've been around for a long time so I'm just holding my breath and keeping fingers crossed. I'd love to see a decent market in Japan. Since I lived there for a year, I kind of have a soft spot for it.