Kobo research team is asking for feedback on Reddit

[Aleron Ives]

The survey isn't about you, though. It's about Kobo. Kobo wants to know why you sideload things so that the company can offer products and services that are more appealing to you and thus will make Rakuten more money. If one of the things that appeals to you is noncommercial works, then that appetite is irrelevant to Kobo's business model and thus also to the survey.

[ownedbycats]

Eh? I don't see how it's necessarily irrelevant.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Eh? I don't see how it's necessarily irrelevant.

Agreed as one of the best reasons to buy an ereader is PD ebooks. They were a pain for 20 years till PDAs, phones & tablets and it made a huge difference having the PW1.

Even if you never bought an ebook, even if Kobo didn't sell ebooks, Kobo + calibre is the best solution for maybe 100,000 legally free ebooks, inc 70K on gutenberg. Also read large web site content saved off line via LO Writer and/or calibre such as these
https://archive.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/index.htm
https://emeraldisle.ie/legends

Either save websites or copy/paste to writer.

Or if you write, give up printing on paper. Instead "print" to docx, convert docx to epub with calibre. Copy back annotations.
Save maybe 1000 pages of paper plus toner or ink every year. An epub is a much better solution than Sony's (and others) DPT solutions using PDF.

[rantanplan]

There's also https://standardebooks.org/. They update content from project Gutenberg to match modern standards, formatting etc. It's a community project.

[lkmiller]

Kobo already makes it pretty easy to read things that aren't their ebooks. I use Pocket and Overdrive a lot. I don't really use the Dropbox and Google Drive integration, but those are a couple more ways to let you get other stuff on there.

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I'm also a fanfic reader and noticed that too - it didn't seem to take noncommercial works into thought at all really.

Presumably because they can’t sell fanfic on their online store.

My daughter is massively into fanfic. I’ve begun looking into the Calibre plugin bc she has epilepsy and all the flickering with the Kobo web browser makes me nervous (that, and it eats up her battery something fierce). (It’s thanks to a comment you made on another thread that I learned of its existence.)

I subscribe to J-novel.club myself. I’d love to see Kobo’s web browser updated so that it’s faster, renders smoother, supports modern security protocols, and allows for authorization popups. Or an API that allows sites to deliver content directly to my Kobo without the klunky browser.

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by rantanplan

There's also https://standardebooks.org/. They update content from project Gutenberg to match modern standards, formatting etc. It's a community project.

Their Kobo epubs don’t have those gorgeous covers. I’ve stopped using them as a PD source. Don’t you run into the same problem?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Claude_C

If you don't mind the extra weight, why not carry around an extra external battery. Problem solved.

Nope. Not solved. Having a wire to the battery is not solved. Having a more powerful battery in the Kobo is problem solved. Also, having a more powerful battery will allow a more powerful processor without losing any reading time. Also, the Sage and Elipsa both need a more powerful battery. Much more then the Libra 2. So they will get heavier and rightly so.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by rantanplan

There's also https://standardebooks.org/. They update content from project Gutenberg to match modern standards, formatting etc. It's a community project.

And their eBooks BREAK f you prefer to read ePub. Modern formatting? You should have said RUBBISH formatting. The code they use is as complicated as they can make it. The formatting needed for these eBooks is quite simple. So the rule to Keep is Simple is something that break in spades. They do a terrible job and it shows when the eBooks don't work. And if you want to fix the mess they made, it's not as easy as it should be given all the convoluted code they yes. They have no idea what a good eBook is and they never will.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by lkmiller

I like big bezels and I cannot lie.

You and me both.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Cootey

Their Kobo epubs don’t have those gorgeous covers. I’ve stopped using them as a PD source. Don’t you run into the same problem?

Since I have to sideload them anyway, I always downloaded the ePub and let KoboTouchExtended cover to kepub. Mine have covers.

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by HarryEngineer

Ensure to tick the sideload option guys... we dont want to lose this functionality.

Down with cloud bs.

I don’t really get the animosity on this forum towards WiFi and cloud services, but I’ve been a member here long enough to know I’m an outlier. I use sideloaded or cloud services depending on my needs, so I’d like to see both services better supported in the future.

For example, I’m glad that Kobo makes my notebooks available on the web through my account, but wish Kobo’s cloud supported my folder organization. When I access my notebooks from any iOS Kobo app, everything is jumbled together in the same list, just like the website. It lacks elegance.

I’d also like to see sideloaded book entries preserved in the cloud in the collections that I assign instead of having to reassign them all over again when my Kobo device needs to be restored to factory default. It doesn’t happen often, but it happens often enough to be a pain. (The Calibre collections solution isn’t optimal for my usage.)

I also wouldn’t mind sideloaded books digitally synched between my two Kobo devices. I, and others, spend enough at kobo.com each year that I think they can afford to give us better sideloaded ebooks cloud support. We’re not the thieves in this relationship. 😏 Theoretically, cloud support for ebooks would address the above wish as well.

If sideloaded book cloud support was the Overdrive/Dropbox perk of a newer model around the corner, I’d buy it in a heartbeat.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Cootey

I don’t really get the animosity on this forum towards WiFi and cloud services, but I’ve been a member here long enough to know I’m an outlier. I use sideloaded or cloud services depending on my needs, so I’d like to see both services better supported in the future.

The issue for most of the posters is the use of a cloud or other network attached storage to store their calibre libraries. Keep your backups in the cloud? Sure though I personally keep local backups as well. Run your calibre library from network storage? This is considered A BAD IDEA. See SQLite Over a Network, Caveats and Considerations for SQLite's take on doing so. Since calibre uses SQLite as it's database solution, the same issues apply. Until SQLite releases a free network storage compatible version, this is unlikely to change. If you think why not change to a different DB supplier? The choices there are rather expensive for Kovid to eat the cost and even so, as most database administrators would tell you, you need to have good backups.

[Aleron Ives]

Originally Posted by Cootey

Their Kobo epubs don’t have those gorgeous covers. I’ve stopped using them as a PD source. Don’t you run into the same problem?

No. The cover art works just fine on their KEPUB files for me.

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

No. The cover art works just fine on their KEPUB files for me.

I wonder if they’ve changed something. I last tried two years ago. Thanks for the feedback. I’ll revisit the site tonight.