Quote:
Originally Posted by Gandulf
Haha, new message from kobo, they currently do not have a retailer in SA. So circuitcity is lieing and kobo's website is wrong.
This put me in a bad mood, messaged back to kobo. Like your mission statement
"At Kobo, we embody everything you love about your favourite local bookshop, perfected for your modern life. Our mission is to bring the power of reading to your world — because we're booklovers, just like you." Shame the world no longer includes SA.
Anyway sorry guys for the vent, but now it's cleared things up kindle or nothing.  |
1- Sounds like the Kobo contract was allowed to lapse or was actively cancelled.
2- "Kindles sell themselves" says a lot more about consumers than about store staff. Properly trained staff exist to help shoppers find what *they* want/need *not* to promote what they prefer. (That is one of the most common gripes folks have about independent pbook B&M stores: snotty salesfolk sneering at their genre buys, especially romance.) One of the reasons why the US CircuitCity failed (and BestBuy survived) was employees steering consumers to what *they* considered best. (And since they were paid on commision, that meant big "upselling". People who walk in knowing what they want do NOT like being steered to something else.
3- If people walk in looking for Kindles it probably is because Amazon actively promotes their ereaders *themselves* and Kobo relies on local partners to do the promotion. That costs money so either the price goes up or the store profit goes down. Stores love products that "sell themselves".
4- How do the ebookstores compare in catalog sizes? Does SA have a local ebookstore or do Kindle users work off the main AMAZON.COM or UK store. The US store is enormous, loaded with APub and indie books that, unlike most tradpubs, aren't georestricted. That is by now *a lot* of added titles. I don't see a South African Kindle store so odds are local Kindle buyers have a much bigger store to buy from.
South Africa is far from the only place where mainstream shoppers think Kindle is a generic term for ebook readers or the only reader worth buying. It isn't up to retailers to evangelize but rather up to the device builder. There's a reason Amazon puts Kindle front and center to book shoppers.
No fun being on the short end of the stick (been there, done that, got the T-shirt) but retail is about making the most money the fastest. One consequence is that popular products displace the less popular ones.
The remedy for that is online shopping.
