Kobo (eBook store and readers)

4 of 5 Stars

I started buying eBooks from Kobo back in the early 2010s, when they were partnered with IndieBound to send a cut to local indie bookshops and I linked it with Mysterious Galaxy. (These days, Bookshop.org is IndieBound's preferred choice for that.)

It took a bit to get the Android app configured nicely, and even now the service can still be pushy. Unlike Amazon, Kobo still offers in-app purchases, and it wants you to buy more books before you read the ones you have.

Which, I mean, ok, fair enough.

I figure Kobo is in the sweet spot where it's worth sacrificing 30% of some purchases to get more purchases. Amazon's already dominant in the market, so they don't need to encourage impulse buys. And then smaller players like eBooks.com and Bookshop.org can't afford to lose that 30%.

I turned off a lot of "features" early on - I don't want recommended books to pop up in my notifications, and I certainly don't need achievements like a Steam game to encourage me to read more. (I think they've since gotten rid of that one.) You know what encourages me to read more? Having time to read.

Anyway, once I got that settled, I've been reasonably happy with the app on a decade's worth of phones, a tablet and a Boox Poke3 e-reader.

Reading Choices

The Kobo Clara e-reader is the best dedicated, single-bookstore e-reader I've used, but of course it doesn't handle books bought from other stores unless they're DRM-free. (Probably. It might be possible to side-load books from other sources that also use Adobe DRM. I should try that.) That's the main reason I bought, and still use, the Boox tablet: I can install almost anything on it.

The Clara does, however have the option to connect to Pocket for articles you've saved on other devices, and Libby/Overdrive for library books. And there's apparently quite a bit of hacking and modifying that can be done to Kobo devices.

In addition to the mobile app and dedicated devices, you can read most purchases directly on the website now. Any books that are DRM-free, you can just download as standard .ePub files and read on whatever device you want. Of course most of the books they sell are locked with DRM, and you can only "download" a link to Adobe Digital Editions.

While writing this up, I discovered there's a desktop app for Windows and macOS. The Windows app you download from the website feels like a wrapper around the website. But there's also a bare-bones app on the Microsoft Store that seems to have been built for the resounding flop that was the Windows 8 let's-try-to-make-a-tablet-OS era.

Reviewing

Kobo encourages you to rate and review books as you finish them, even if you don't have a decent keyboard on-hand. The way they're displayed is also geared toward short reviews. This is another reason I usually cross-post only a summary there, rather than the full review.

— Kelson Vibber, 2025-04-16

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