Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
I'm in ranty mode, having just come from the Audiobooks thread; I thought I'd carry over here.
I get it. Large, multi-use coupons and contests that occasioned gross entry abuse to get the big discounts were not tenable long-term. I was only surprised the party lasted as long as it did.
But would it kill Kobo to have the occasional large-ish (and I don't mean 90%) discount that actually worked on any non-agency book? Not only do I not bother trying the supposedly unique coupon codes they send me since I know they won't work, I also can't be bothered to check out the garden-variety promotional codes since the list of books never has anything of interest to me.
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I don't think their business model allows for it.
There've been a lot of discussions around here about the sales and discounts at Kobo, and occasionally somebody with useful insider information chimes in. Namely BearMountainBooks.
It seems that when Kobo offers one of these sales/promotions, they send out notices to all the publishers asking them to participate. If a publisher doesn't want to participate, the coupon code doesn't work on their books. Simple.
But it means that there's no such thing as a store-wide non-agency coupon at Kobo. (At least in North America.)
Now, why this is is hard to say. It could be that Kobo doesn't want to eat all the discount themselves (which they would probably have to do without publisher participation.) Perhaps their systems can't do the proper accounting for it. I don't know, I'm simply speculating.
I do know that they do store-wide coupons in other jurisdictions. Taiwan springs to mind. What it is about their contracts with publishers for that jurisdiction that allows them to do it I don't know, and I don't know the economics of that market that encourages them to do that type of promotion.