[ficbot]

When the Kobo reader was announced, they had a local number as their press contact so I was able to go in today for an interview. I got a loaner unit of their new device and had a very interesting two-hour-long conversation with Michael, the head of Kobo. It was so nice to chat with someone who knows his stuff and had real power with the publishers!

We talked about a ton of stuff. I will be doing a big write-up for Teleread in the next few days. But there were two points I wanted to share right away:

1) Their goal is pretty much word ebook domination, with software for every device available in any market everywhere, and content from the major publishers plus local ones wherever they can get deals. They are therefore much more customer service oriented than some other retailers I ave dealt with *cough* fictionwise *cough*

2) He told me to expect it to take 'a couple months' for the agency mess to sort itself out, but not to panic. He said they have already received numerous emails from content partners with price changes just in the last few days---in other words, requests to lower a price. The publishers are basically lemmings who see what the other ones are doing, freak out that they are not doing it, and copy. So some prices have already come down, and Random House was never really in it in the first place. It will take time to sort out, but he thinks it *will* sort out and said that publishers are already friendlier to him than they were last year and are starting to recognize that e-stuff if the future. There is no conspiracy to sabotage the e-market. They just have no idea what they're doing.

Great meeting, super-nice guy. I'll have more later.