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Rakuten Kobo returns to U.S. retail as sales double

Rakuten Kobo returns to U.S. retail as sales double

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Comments (82)

  • Night_Thastus
    I got the Libra Color awhile back. I rediscovered my love of reading. Chewed through dozens of Star Trek books (some are quite good!). And a comic, which surprised me with the color and resolution the Libra offered.The store seems to work well and the prices are pretty cheap, but you can also load them manually through something like Calibre if you already have a collection of ebooks.I love how thin and light it is. I originally thought the small size would be a downside, but being able to fit it almost anywhere has made it great for plane/train rides or any kind of trip.The battery lasts quite a long time, though it seems to discharge quickly if you don't use it for a while.I think my favorite part is that it's just super intuitive. It feels purpose-built and does everything in the way I expect it to.Overall, highly recommend. Very good product.
  • jjice
    I got a Kindle Paperwhite as a gift from my work and I fell in love with e-readers. Then I really didn't like how Amazon was locking down getting your own epubs onto the device (it's only gotten worse), so I quickly found Kobos were an excellent device for my use case. I found that buying ePubs online was way more available than I would have thought and now I get to keep my digital books. Just drag and drop them onto the Kobo.Kobo also has a "sideload mode" that (despite the slightly confusing name) just remove all online features all together.
  • strictnein
    Interesting observation here. I still read a lot, but airplanes have become a place I rarely do. I used to always pick up a book every time I flew and would finish it on the flight home. I would still much rather read a real book on the beach than doomscroll though.> "We're losing the person who reads one book a year," he says. "And that was the person who bought their one Tom Clancy novel when they went on vacation, because you needed something to read on the plane because there was nothing else to do on the plane. Now that the plane has Wi-Fi, and so does that beach, that person is scrolling, not reading."
  • jm4
    Love Kobo. I switched from Kindle to the Libra Colour a while back. It's a superior device and I don't have to give money to Amazon. It's more responsive, it has physical buttons for turning pages and the screen looks great. The built in book store is ok. I haven't had trouble finding anything, but there aren't many reviews if you're into that sort of thing. I was able to sideload my Kindle library easily too.
  • Pfhortune
    I love that Kobos can still be set up completely offline. At the setup screen you can mount the device, set a flag in the config file, unmount/reboot, and boom, it's ready for your books.My Clara BW is my daily driver. As much as I'd like to use an open reader, their rendering and screen quality are still not quite as polished as the corpo options.
  • hn_submit
    Amazon wiping people's e-books they had already bought was probably the straw that broke the camel's back. Yeah, they swore to never do it again but what's that worth?I've been steering clear from Kindle even though their devices are an attractive buy. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Amazon left the e-reader market in a few years since their Kindles are tainted.
  • ryanmcbride
    My wife and I both had kindles since they were first a thing and we both switched to Kobo a few years ago. So nice not getting ads.
  • guillybarres
    70% women is about what I see in bookstores, and frequently the main display cases are geared towards genres more popular among women, like romantasy.
  • miladyincontrol
    A possibly minor nitpick but given women are the majority of their customer base, please make these things more aesthetic. Doesnt even have to be a whole redesign, give it some color, even just an on-trend shade would go far to make it a lot more fashionable.
  • pepperoni_pizza
    Public Service Announcement: if you're loading epubs to Kobo via Calibre, make sure to convert them to kepub (the Kobo's "enahanced" version of epub). Calibre can do that with no loss of quality with a checkbox, and page turns are much much faster.
  • int32_64
    If you aren't reading comics I wouldn't recommend color e-readers yet. The screens are dimmer and have a noticeable filter over them.
  • Hasz
    Kobo Elipsa (1) is my preferred reader for PDFs/papers in particular. Genuinely good product, software works well enough and presents as USB mass storage, long battery life. Other than perhaps a more responsive, USB-C pen, IDK what else you could improve on.
  • hedgehog
    Does anyone here have experience building custom apps for the Kobo? I'm considering getting an e-ink device as a way to shift document reviews off of my regular LCD screens and away from my desk.
  • usern20260720
    I just got the biggest one they sell. I wanted to fulfil my dream of turning pages using a remote. It turns out though, that the device is switching off both wifi and bluetooth every few minutes (Maybe only when there is no wifi available) and there’s no devmodeon capable of fixing that.
  • tjridesbikes
    I bought a Clara Color when Amazon decided that my Kindle Keyboard was no longer worthy of receiving ebooks that I purchased. I've loved it so far. I love that was even able to load my jailbroken epub library to the Kobo. I paid for the damned book. Let me read it!
  • alpineman
    No one reasonable wants to support Bezos and his Melania funding
  • hosel
    Is there anything out there comparable to my original Kindle Oasis? Mine has lived in airplane mode its whole life and I’m afraid for when it finally dies
  • erghjunk
    I bought a kobo (2022 maybe?) pretty much entirely because (at the time anyway) it had the best on-device integration with Overdrive. not sure if kindle, nook, etc still require you to browse and check out books on a secondary device and then sync but I appreciated the kobo getting rid of that step. still using it and still happy.
  • throwaway173738
    Is there a way to get kids books on Kobo? Every time we fly we carry like 10 pounds of board books to keep my son entertained. It would be awesome to have an ebook reader with his board books and other stuff on it.
  • throwawayk7h
    I hacked my old kindle from a decade ago, highly recommended to anyone who wants to unlock it. There are guides online.
  • criddell
    I switched to buying books from Kobo this year because removing DRM from books bought at Amazon is getting too difficult and unreliable.
  • mparnisari
    Kobo has daily deals going. Every day I open my wishlist and sort by price lowest to highest, and every few days I buy something.
  • fred_is_fred
    I bought one in July, I chose Kobo because it's hackable and you can ssh in. So far I've had as much fun with that as with reading.
  • unethical_ban
    If my Kindle ever breaks I'm going to look at Kobo. I prefer whatever ecosystem sells me the ebooks that are easiest to de-DRM so I can own what I've paid for. A decade ago, that was Amazon, but they have locked down a lot.
  • Larrikin
    Kavita, Tailscale, KoReader with OPDS, on the Kobo is basically a perfect system for organizing ebooks, transferring, and reading.
  • AlexB138
  • bryanlarsen
    Doubling a really small number is not particularly impressive. The article doesn't have numbers, but I believe that Canadian sales of Kobo still significantly exceed American sales despite the doubling.