MobileRead Forums - View Single Post

pwalker8 · 02-04-2020, 12:40 PM

I looked at the Kobo forum, but it seems to be mostly focused on the Kobo devices, the software associated with those devices and hacks for those devices rather than the Kobo eBook Store, so I decided to put this here, please don't consign the thread to the oblivion of the Kobo forum simply because it discusses the Kobo eBook Store. It's about more than just Kobo. Plenty of Kindle only threads are in this forum.

This morning I got a survey request from kobo-research, aka Rakuten Kobo. Hum, maybe they are finally serious about providing some competition to the Kindle store here in the US.

It was actually a fairly well done survey. In the first free text field in the survey I told them - "give me a reason to buy from you rather than from the Kindle Store". They asked for some features that I would like, and I gave them a nice list -
- sync between the Kobo app and Kobo devices. Not syncing is simply annoying.
- improve the discoverability and searching on the store.
- increase your book catalog.

Another thing that I didn't put down, but is strong from me is DRM. I won't buy books where I can't remove the DRM. Apparently if you want to remove DRM from ADE, then you need to use 2.0.1 rather than the current version, but 2.0.1 no longer works with the current version of Mac OS. I might consider buying some stuff from them if this wasn't the case.

I also tried a little experiment this morning. I've got the first 6 Witch World novels by Andre Norton in two omnibus books (Gates of Witch World and Lost Lands of Witch World). It would be kind of nice to have some of the others. So I decided to see which of the three eBook stores (Kindle, Kobo, Apple) made it easiest to find the books I wanted to buy.

To be honest, none really did a very good job. Apple probably did the best, at least when I typed in the search norton witch world, I got various witch world books by Andre Norton, not books by unrelated authors (Amazon gave the same books, but mixed in with other authors. No idea why Tree of Ages was included, other than Amazon was charging the author for placement for the ad) Kobo was kind of like Apple. In a way, it's like looking up the spelling of a word in the dictionary. You have to know most of the spelling to look it up. I find myself with two browser windows open, one to the book store and one to google to look up the information that the book store should be giving me.

02-04-2020, 12:40 PM	#1
pwalker8 Grand Sorcerer Posts: 7,196 Karma: 70314280 Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Atlanta, GA Device: iPad Pro, iPad mini, Kobo Aura, Amazon paperwhite, Sony PRS-T2	eBook Store I looked at the Kobo forum, but it seems to be mostly focused on the Kobo devices, the software associated with those devices and hacks for those devices rather than the Kobo eBook Store, so I decided to put this here, please don't consign the thread to the oblivion of the Kobo forum simply because it discusses the Kobo eBook Store. It's about more than just Kobo. Plenty of Kindle only threads are in this forum. This morning I got a survey request from kobo-research, aka Rakuten Kobo. Hum, maybe they are finally serious about providing some competition to the Kindle store here in the US. It was actually a fairly well done survey. In the first free text field in the survey I told them - "give me a reason to buy from you rather than from the Kindle Store". They asked for some features that I would like, and I gave them a nice list - - sync between the Kobo app and Kobo devices. Not syncing is simply annoying. - improve the discoverability and searching on the store. - increase your book catalog. Another thing that I didn't put down, but is strong from me is DRM. I won't buy books where I can't remove the DRM. Apparently if you want to remove DRM from ADE, then you need to use 2.0.1 rather than the current version, but 2.0.1 no longer works with the current version of Mac OS. I might consider buying some stuff from them if this wasn't the case. I also tried a little experiment this morning. I've got the first 6 Witch World novels by Andre Norton in two omnibus books (Gates of Witch World and Lost Lands of Witch World). It would be kind of nice to have some of the others. So I decided to see which of the three eBook stores (Kindle, Kobo, Apple) made it easiest to find the books I wanted to buy. To be honest, none really did a very good job. Apple probably did the best, at least when I typed in the search norton witch world, I got various witch world books by Andre Norton, not books by unrelated authors (Amazon gave the same books, but mixed in with other authors. No idea why Tree of Ages was included, other than Amazon was charging the author for placement for the ad) Kobo was kind of like Apple. In a way, it's like looking up the spelling of a word in the dictionary. You have to know most of the spelling to look it up. I find myself with two browser windows open, one to the book store and one to google to look up the information that the book store should be giving me.