First visit to online kobo store

[hermes]

1. Previews: Great concept, unsatisfactory execution.

Kindle, as I recall, has excellent length samples offered on the Amazon website (though I don't know if one can download them to one's reader). Kobo allows one to download what it calls 'previews' but they are often disappointing. Cruising through and picking up over eighty books I thought I'd like to read I transferred them to my Kobo touch - easy to do.

However, consider the following... I'll call these categories, 1) 'meat' (sorry fellow vegetarians) for a generous sample, 2) 'potatoes' - some sample but leaves one dissatisfied, not just hungering for more, but unable to truly know the author's writing style or book's substance, and 3) 'garnish' - just filler. Thirty were garnish. Twenty-seven were potatoes. Seventeen were meat.

My categorizing is somewhat arbitrary, for example Robert Pelton's World's Most Dangerous Places does indeed offer a lengthy sample but none of it reporting on actual places, it was more general information and editorial. Example meaty samples: Factory Girls and Ascent of Money. Example potatoes - sorry, I got tried of writing for free. Example garnish - many small independent publications and virtually all sexual content books.

I don't call a preview substantial even if it is 30 pages of the following: cover, title page (blank), acknowledgments, preface, legal disclaimers, reviews and the lengthy copyright notices! Many were precisely that fluff. Several books had promising titles and were on useful subjects but I decided to not spend the money on them, anymore than I would, without a promising sample, hire the services of a newbie hooker. Why take a chance renting an unseasoned professional when you know so many seasoned ones where a night with her is a guaranteed good time? But this ebook to P4P analogy is breaking down as the North America 2011 ebook market hasn't yet become a sex market of abundance unlike Pattaya 1989, Phnom Penh 1994 or Yangon 2004.

2. Random books appeared on my Kobo, titles and subjects nothing close to what I requested. Either the website screwed up and gave me some wrong titles or it magically snuck in books to test whether I might be interested. Thus, I had to change setting to airplane mode where the wifi does not operate. Wifi on is the default.

2. Interface: OK, but a few bumps.

When a preview downloads to one's Kobo there is no obvious button to go back to one's search list. So this means, arrowing forward the twelve pages or whatever to where one is in the previous search. And it doesn't say how many books one has to choose from on say 'beekeeping medieval', just how many pages.

[gpw11]

Originally Posted by hermes

But this ebook to P4P analogy is breaking down as the North America 2011 ebook market hasn't yet become a sex market of abundance unlike Pattaya 1989, Phnom Penh 1994 or Yangon 2004.

Not to be a dick here, but is that really the only problem you see with that analogy?

And there is a *fairly* obvious back button to get back to the store list right after you download a book preview.

[taming]

I'm pretty sure that what hermes chose to see as the nefarious addition of unwanted previews were the previews that came preloaded.

[baronrus]

best not to respond to inane OP's like this!

[m_bisson]

Hey herpes!!! Did kobo reveal your secret identity like chapters did?

[baronrus]

Originally Posted by m_bisson

Hey herpes!!! Did kobo reveal your secret identity like chapters did?

Either way I'm still laughing, thats very funny!

[taming]

Let's be nice. I was content to let it float back to the land of the irrelevant, but gpw11 was so earnest (karma to him, for jumping right in).