Kobo Goes Heavyweight

Amazon’s Kindle has been a pretty big deal these past few years. They’ve pretty much dominated the ereader market while other companies have flashed in and out of competition. I remember having a Nook once, which I was pretty damned excited about. I think I still have it somewhere? Maybe? I don’t use it, though, and haven’t in years. I don’t have a Kindle, either. Sheepishly, I admit to downloading the free app (genius move by Amazon, by the way).

Currently, I publish exclusively to Amazon, which means I use Kindle to distribute ebooks and Createspace for paperbacks. One of my goals this year is to branch out into iBooks and Kobo.

And it seems like the perfect time.

On January 26th I read an article about how Kobo signed a deal with Walmart, which will give both companies a great chance to compete with their most aggressive competitor: Amazon.

Kobo has been on the cutting edge of advancement, pushing innovations even before Kindle makes them popular, but they have a different audience. Google has also started selling ebooks for themselves, which means the market for self-publishing will get more aggressive. And challenging.

Either way, I’m hoping to branch out and become accessible to different markets.

Hearing about new tech gets me kind of excited, which is an odd thing for a Luddite to say.