[Jaden]

Originally Posted by taming

If there are eInk readers out there that do not offend you by integrating selling into the reader experience, then buy one of those.

The thing is (and I guess it's true for a lot of people): When I bought the Touch, there was no advertising on it. It was ad-free.

I had to pay about 160 USD for my Kobo. (It's cheaper now - if I had paid the 120 USD it costs now and had known there was advertising on it, okay... but I paid the full price for an ad-free reader.)

Then the extra carousel came. And now there's even more advertising than before. To me it's more interesting than the carousel. It's better made.

But I understand why people dislike it. And one "tab" - discover (maybe named differently) - would have been enough so that the other 2 could have been used to enhance the reading experience and access stuff already on the reader (for example by having a shortlink to the shelves and to the shortlist).

Or maybe there could be two slightly different homescreens.

Reading - the lower tabs show library, shortlist and shelves (for example)
Discover - the lower tabs show wishlist, find books, and whatever else

Not sure how exactly this could be designed, but if there were 2 different screens, one only trying to offer me the best possible navigation of stuff I already own and the other offer me the best possible navigation of books I might like to buy, it would be much nicer - and might not repell those who hate advertising (or at least not that strongly).

And while you consider this, also remember that Kobo listened to a huge number of people who hated the short list and asked for "real" bookshelves. They also hated the carousel, which held the hidden links to the store functions.

I never heard anyone say "ditch the shorlist". They just wanted shelves in addition. We now have that, but the shortlist is mostly useless because it's buried in between the shelves. If it was on top at least, but no... so why even bother to keep the shortlist at all?

I hope they'll bring it back to the homescreen and/or the Library menu.

People complained about the carousel because it first introduced advertising (which also takes up a good amount of internal memory, mind you, not only space on the homescreen).

But lots of people who had the carousel set to shortlist actually liked that and recommended others to use it that way. If you did that, the advertising was hidden, which it isn't anymore. Every time you go to the homescreen you'll see discover, find books and wishlist, which will be annoying to some people.

So having three "advertising links" on the homescreen instead of one (the carousel) is kind of a step backwards.

Also I don't get my money back now that I have a reader with advertising instead of the ad-free reader I've bought.

Personally I don't care that much as long as they don't only improve on the advertising but actually make the reading experience better. And I will not buy books I don't like, no matter how hard they try to push me.

(Like sending an email nagging me to buy a book I've looked at on the Kobo website. I would have bought it if I would have thought it to be interesting, so no need to try to push me to buy it. It's kind of annoying, really, like those guys selling sunglasses at the beach and running after you even and telling you how nice and cheap those sunglasses are though you've already said no...)

I am sure that Kobo is paying attention to posts from folks who have different opinions about this. I am also pretty sure that if changes are going to be made based on these comments, they will not be the first changes we see. I'd much rather have them work on the issues like funky sideloaded fonts and slow ePUB page changes, myself.

I hope they will and I agree with you, especially on the slow ePub page turns. If they'll listen to us and further improve the homescreen (I actually like the look, just wish for some other tabs below the 5 books), fine, but page turns and fonts are much more important.