To Kobo or Not to Kobo … is that a question?

Kobo, for the uninitiated, is a company that makes an e-reader much like the Kindle and the Nook. E-book authors will probably recognize the name as one of the various platforms that Smashwords distributes their work to via the site’s “premium channels.” The average man-on-the-street has probably never heard of Kobo, as neither the e-reader nor the company get anywhere near the press that the Kindle does. Whether or not Kobo is a viable alternative to the Kindle, or even the Nook, is very much up for debate. Many statistics list it as the fifth most used platform, at least in the United States and Europe.

Uploading to Kobo is very similar to publishing on Amazon KDP or Smashwords, but there are a few more obstacles with which you have to contend. First of all, your manuscript has to be in the form of an Epub file. Luckily, Kobo will currently convert it for free, but you also lose a little bit of control on the end product that way. You may want to convert it yourself, using Calibre or some similar software, so you know what your readers will be seeing.

Your book will also need an actual ISBN (International Standard Book Number) to be uploaded and sold through Kobo and its own premium distribution network (“of leading retailers around the world”), which is something you really need to have, because otherwise your book will only be seen on the Kobo website. That’s not a lot of exposure even for a best-selling book, much less a new e-book; it’s sort of like publishing a book and putting a bread card about it in your living room window.

Bowkers’ prices for ISBNs. The more, the merrier.

This is one of those rare instances where it is advantageous to be Canadian; not only have you sent Justin Bieber out from your borders, hopefully never to return, but Canadians can get ISBNs for free! If you don’t have moose in your front yard, you are probably going to have to pay for your ISBN. That will run you around £119 to £575-ish in Great Britain and Ireland and about $125 in the U.S. for each book you want to publish on Kobo. And if your book or e-book already has an ISBN for a print edition or an e-book published on another site, don’t worry! You still have to buy a new one for Kobo! Don’t you just love bureaucracies! Need another reason to move to Canada?

Is it worth it? The current guide for Kobo Writing Life, Kobo’s e-book self-publishing platform, lists partners that include Chapters/Indigo in Canada, Angus and Robertson in Australia, Whitcoulls in New Zealand, FNAC in France, and W.H. Smith in the UK. If those are potential markets that appeal to you or you think your book will sell enough to make back that ISBN cost, go for it. Personally, the only one I’ve know anything about is W.H. Smith and that was from BBC comedy routines I’ve heard.

As for getting paid, Kobo’s a little backwards in that regard, as it requires a minimum of $100 of sales for the monthly payment (paid 45 days after the end of the month, so really it’s every month-and-a-half), though they will pay you every six months, no matter what the balance.

The alternative to listing directly on Kobo is to use one of their partner distributors, such as Smashwords, Book Baby, eBookit, Fast Pencil, Bookmasters, or eBook Partnership in the UK or Book Pod in Australia. Smashwords gives you the option of a free ISBN for your book, so that takes a good chunk of the expense with Kobo out of the picture, though you are again at the tender mercies of a middleman.

One thing an author needs to know about Kobo is that readers cannot review books directly; they can only give them an appropriate star rating once they buy and download the book. Kobo leeches all of its reviews from Goodreads.com, so a reader would have to go there to write a review in order for it to appear on the Kobo site. I don’t quite understand why they don’t have their own proprietary review system like most e-book websites … perhaps a dearth of customers? Having reviews from the most popular readers’ site on the planet is a pretty smart move. It can disguise a lot of failings, unfortunately.

So is Kobo right for you? Do you need to get hands-on with it or do you continue to just use Smashwords to get your e-books in the hands of Kobo Reader readers? That choice, as always, is up to you. Until Kobo gets some stronger footholds in this burgeoning industry, I’m taking the latter path. At least it’s cheaper.