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Rakuten Kobo returns to U.S. retail as sales double
https://www.reddit.com/r/kobo/comments/1w20azv/the_doubling_of_kobos_us_sales_in_both_2025_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/kobo/comments/1w20azv/the_doubling_...
- fred_is_fred 1mo agoI 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.
- rpdillon 1mo agoI had no idea! I'd switched from Kindle to Boox because Boox runs Android, which is more hackable, but if Kobo supports SSH, I'll have to give it another look!
- Seattle3503 1mo agoHow do you like your Boox device?
- genericuser256 1mo agoI liked my boox palma a lot until its display broke randomly after 2 months in a soft pocket and now it's ewaste.
- frm88 1mo agoI have a Poke since 2022 because amazon deleted my library from my Paperwhite. Same functions, better format and I can buy my books directly via browser from Kobo. No more perpetual airplane mode. Also, tons of formats, not limited to awz or epub.
- qlte 1mo agoI've had a Boox Page for about two years now as a Kindle Oasis replacement (current model is Boox Go 7 B&W). I get a bit more than a week of battery life typically which is good enough for me. And most valuable is using the same third party/self hosted apps for sync with my other devices. I've haven't used the Boox native store/reader even once.
- fred_is_fred 1mo agoIt's busybox underneath so you can hack on it but you can't run full apps in the Android sense.
- juiceland 1mo agoIt’s a shame that Boox disregards GPL2 intentionally. Wish we had more hardware makers that weren’t hostile to free software. [0]https://x.com/puffnfresh/status/1587064729977044994?s=46 https://x.com/puffnfresh/status/1587064729977044994?s=46
- cosmic_cheese 1mo agoThey’re also just more user friendly in general. I have a nearly decade old Kobo that still serves its purpose well and I love how it shows up as a mass storage device when plugged into my computer. No clunky management software (Calibre may be functional, but its UI is godawful) or file conversions required, you just manage plain old epubs in your file browser. That functionality can’t randomly vanish one day, either (unlike e.g. Amazon’s email-to-Kindle service). It’s great. As a side effect of its openness I’ve bought more books through the Kobo store than I would have otherwise. A perfect counter example is my Oculus Quest 2 which I go out of my way to not buy games from its associated marketplace on; as long as that device is hard-tethered to Facebook and its software, I’m better off as using it as a “dumb” headset with VR purchases going to PC marketplaces like Steam.
- MrDOS 1mo ago> plain old epubs Kobo devices ship two different rendering engines: the obsolete, appallingly bad Adobe Reader Mobile SDK (RMSDK), and their own, bespoke, WebKit-based renderer. By default, files with an .epub extension are rendered with RMSDK. Consequently, you'll get all sorts of weird issues. Some of the ones I've encountered: I've had cover images not displaying in the library, misbehaving internal links (footnotes), inability to override typefaces/text size. Easy fix: rename the file to .kepub.epub[0]. Slightly more involved fix: run the file through Kepubify[1] first. This tool makes further tweaks to the books to enable a few other features, like remaining read time estimation. [0]: https://github.com/kobolabs/epub-spec#sideloading-for-testing-purposes https://github.com/kobolabs/epub-spec#sideloading-for-testin... [1]: https://pgaskin.net/kepubify/ https://pgaskin.net/kepubify/
- cosmic_cheese 1mo agoInteresting, I wasn't aware of this, but it's good to know. My needs haven't been demanding enough to notice a difference.
- pepperoni_pizza 1mo agoCalibre can also do that for you transparently when loading the files onto the Kobo.
- delecti 1mo agoYou can't SSH into kindles anymore? I know that used to be a thing.
- qlte 1mo agoIf they're jailbroken.
- bryanlarsen 1mo agoDoubling 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.
- Hasz 1mo agoKobo 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.
- ryanmcbride 1mo agoMy 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.
- hosel 1mo agoIs 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
- criddell 1mo agoI've never found one. Kobo has the Sage which seems similar at first glance, but unfortunately it also has a stylus. It's closer to a Kindle Scribe or a Remarkable device.
- TFNA 1mo agoSage was discontinued already some time ago.
- qlte 1mo agoBoox Go 7 (B&W version) or Boox Page (discontinued) if you're willing to go Android. Both have the Oasis form factor with two physical buttons. Battery life is more like 1.5 weeks but hasn't been an issue for me at all. For me, I wanted Android after my Kindle to use the same apps I use to read books (or saved articles via self hosted Karakeep) on all my other devices.
- alpineman 1mo agoNo one reasonable wants to support Bezos and his Melania funding
- Pfhortune 1mo agoI 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.
- rationalist 1mo agoI just bought a Kobo Clara Color after purchasing various Kindles for years. It requires an online setup (account). A quick search did not find what your saying. Can you please post a how-to or link one (that I couldn't find)?
- Pfhortune 1mo agohttps://qtekfun.com/random-stuff/bypass-kobo/ https://qtekfun.com/random-stuff/bypass-kobo/ This guide is for a kobo that is already set up, but the procedure is mostly the same from step 5 onwards for a new device. The only step that I think is missing from this guide is that you have to select a language before connecting the Kobo via USB, in my experience. Mass storage mode should work once you have picked a language. I also did the same on a factory reset, used Libra Color, and that worked well. On that device I had to do some trickery to get the notes feature to work, which I think involved loading up some dictionary files. I can't readily find the guide I followed for that. --- Edit: I'll also note here that this setup works flawlessly with Calibre! It is detected and syncs easily!
- rationalist 1mo agoThank you
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- lynndotpy 1mo agoYep, this is the reason I chose a Kobo.
- strictnein 1mo agoInteresting 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."
- bluefirebrand 1mo agoPersonally, I have basically stopped reading since my 20s, but I used to read a ton. I like pulp fantasy and scifi and noir detectives and other nonsense, no one seems to write that sort of thing anymore. I loved Dragonlance when it was around I don't want fantasy with "the most unique magic system ever created" or "the most complex society" I want to read about dudes and ladies with huge swords and magic killing dragons and conquering kingdoms I get it, I'm boring but I guarantee the whole "men don't read anymore" would be less true if publishers still put out books like I'm describing Instead when I go into a bookstore for the one time a year I shop for my wife for Christmas, I'm greeted by the likes of "Morning Glory Milking Farm"
- cattenwallen 1mo agoI mean they 100% exist. Brandon Sanderson isn't some excessively complicated fantasy world (despite what fans may say, Sanderson is very approachable). Dungeon Crawler Carl is all the rage. Hell, The Locked Tomb trilogy has tons of big swords and stuff. The reason why morning glory milking farm and other smut exists on bookshelves now is that women were finding and buying the small stuff when no one gave them the time of day. If you want your stuff back on shelves, start buying them, for they 100% exists even if it's a self-publishing sword and sorcery guy.
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- AlexB138 1mo agoPerhaps we should link to the article: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/content-and-e-books/article/101053-rakuten-kobo-re-enters-u-s-retail-as-sales-double.html https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/content...
- dang 1mo agoThanks! Good idea. I'll put the submitted URL in the toptext instead.
- Larrikin 1mo agoKavita, Tailscale, KoReader with OPDS, on the Kobo is basically a perfect system for organizing ebooks, transferring, and reading.
- jjice 1mo agoI 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.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- dominotw 1mo agowhat you mean by locking down? your epub is your epub . i read third party epubs on kindle all the time. i am not sure if i am missing something here dont understand the downvotes. I've read third party books on kindle for decades with no issues.
- NuclearPM 1mo ago[flagged]
- JoeBOFH 1mo agoAmazon is making it harder and harder to copy third party books onto the devices.
- dominotw 1mo agoby doing what? i do it all that time. did one this morning.
- skydhash 1mo agoI gifted my sister my kindle this morning (it was unused for years) after loaded it with azw3 files converted from epub using calibre. The other options is to send epub via email. But I told her to never put it out of airplane mode and get it on WiFi because amazon has deleted my "documents" (that's what they called sideloaded books) before. I own two kobos, a libra for fiction and an ellipsa for tech books and textbooks. Both have koreader on.
- guillybarres 1mo ago70% women is about what I see in bookstores, and frequently the main display cases are geared towards genres more popular among women, like romantasy.
- int32_64 1mo agoIf you aren't reading comics I wouldn't recommend color e-readers yet. The screens are dimmer and have a noticeable filter over them.
- erghjunk 1mo agoI 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.
- hn_submit 1mo agoAmazon 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.
- kitd 1mo agoFun fact: I searched for Kobo Clara on Amazon, and the algorithm has labelled it "Amazon's choice". A subtle agreement with you maybe :)
- criddell 1mo agoThe camel is doing just fine. Amazon ereaders have 70+% market share.
- hn_submit 1mo agoThe world is much larger than the U.S. you know. And Kindle's market share is probably dropping like a brick. I mean, if Kobo's sales are surging then Kindle sales are probably lagging.
- criddell 1mo agoGlobally, Kobo has around 10% market share for ereaders. If they gain another 5% of the market, that's a 50% surge for them and around an 8% drop for Amazon. In the end, it probably doesn't really matter. All the profits are in the books themselves and there are reports that Amazon is doing alright there as well. That said, global ebook sales are still down from their 2013 peak. https://www.ereadersforum.com/threads/amazons-global-dominance-e-books-e-readers-and-the-future-of-digital-publishing.3980/ https://www.ereadersforum.com/threads/amazons-global-dominan...
- mparnisari 1mo agoKobo has daily deals going. Every day I open my wishlist and sort by price lowest to highest, and every few days I buy something.
- TFNA 1mo agoOf course one pays for the actual electronic device, but after that, why buy ebooks? Nearly everything one would want to read is already on the shadow libraries.
- themadturk 1mo agoSome people like supporting the authors of the books they read.
- TFNA 1mo agoOnly a tiny, tiny amount of authors today is making any significant amount of money off book sales; usually at best, book writing is a funnel to more profitable hustles they are engaged in. And of course, many authors are now deceased. If you really want to support quality literary production, pirate the ebooks but support political parties that advocate for UBI.
- throwaway173738 1mo agoIs 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.
- rationalist 1mo agoAren't those designed fit the page, in other words, to keep it looking the same, it would have to be squished (and unreadable) to fit on the screen?
- throwaway173738 27d agoOr it could just be a series of images. I’m looking for a way of not taking 10 pounds of books on a trip not perfect fidelity.
- unethical_ban 1mo agoIf 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.
- criddell 1mo agoI probably will move to Kobo eventually as well. My current device is the Oasis and I wish I had bought a spare. I was always hoping Amazon would update it with a USB-C port which I would have bought on day 1. I know it's such a small issue that no politician will ever take it on, but I really wish there would be some legislation around forcing interoperability and ebook transfer rights. You can buy a Blu Ray disk and it's going to work in your player. Ebooks should be like that too. And I should be able to give away my ebook collection the same way I can my BR collection.
- criddell 1mo agoI switched to buying books from Kobo this year because removing DRM from books bought at Amazon is getting too difficult and unreliable.
- jm4 1mo agoLove 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.
- Insanity 1mo agoDoes it have Goodreads integration? Not that it'd be a dealbreaker for me to switch, but I do enjoy that it syncs my reading progress / library with Goodreads. Which is how me and my friends tend to share what we're reading and then discuss the books at times.
- jm4 1mo agoNot as far as I can tell. If I'm not mistaken, Goodreads is owned by Amazon now. The Kobo does have good Overdrive integration and that's a huge plus.
- Insanity 1mo agoYou're right, Goodreads is owned by Amazon. Somehow didn't think about this, but they'd of course lock it down lol
- mingus88 1mo agoKobo integrates with Libby/Overdrive which I prefer anyway. I maintain lists and progress with my public library subscription
- Insanity 1mo agoCool that you prefer Libby, but saying "use tool X instead" is not really a solution to wanting to use "tool Y". :D
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- throwawayk7h 1mo agoI hacked my old kindle from a decade ago, highly recommended to anyone who wants to unlock it. There are guides online.
- miladyincontrol 1mo agoA 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.
- rationalist 1mo agoWhat I would appreciate is them not plastering the logo/name on the front where it's staring you in the face as you try to read. I already bought the damn device, stop advertising (harassing) to me! (Both my previous generation Kindle Paperwhite that I switched from and the Kobo Clara Colour that I switched to, do this.) Then if they could make the glass screen flush with the front like the Paperwhite, that would be awesome too.
- kevin_thibedeau 1mo agoAcetone or black marker will fix that.
- rationalist 1mo agoMaybe acetone on the Kobo, as it looks like it is printed directly onto the plastic, but for the Kindle, I think it was under the glass.
- rationalist 22d agoFYI anyone else reading this: acetone is too strong and eats away at the plastic.
- TFNA 1mo agoKobo covers are the main way people get that aesthetic oomph.
- usern20260720 1mo agoI 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 1mo agoI 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!
- Night_Thastus 1mo agoI 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.
- pull_my_finger 1mo agoHow did the comic handle on your Libra? I use an older Clara BnW and it really struggles with graphic heavy pdfs - slow page changing etc.
- Night_Thastus 1mo agoAs far as I remember it handled it fine. I think the page turn transitions were slightly slower, but not in a way that hurt the reading experience. I think those are CBZ/CBR archives, which should hold ordinary image files (JPEG/PNG) within. I'm not sure on the details though.
- seam_carver 1mo agoI am the developer of an app where its main purpose is to optimize file size and page turn performance of comics/manga on low-powered ereaders like Kobo: https://github.com/ciromattia/kcc https://github.com/ciromattia/kcc
- kmfrk 1mo agoThat looks amazing! I've been thinking to move to Kobo as well with iBooks feeling like abandonware, and it's also been interesting to see community projects like Nico Verbruggen's typesetting fixes for ebooks[1][2]. Honestly, seeing your fixes and his, makes me more excited about potentially getting one with all the tuning possible. Time to wait and see if anything new gets announced at IFA. [1]: https://nicoverbruggen.be/blog/kobo-typesetting-fixes https://nicoverbruggen.be/blog/kobo-typesetting-fixes [2]: https://www.youtube.com/@NicoVerbruggen/videos https://www.youtube.com/@NicoVerbruggen/videos
- hedgehog 1mo agoDoes 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.
- themadturk 1mo agoThere's an active dev community over at Mobileread.com. Look for the Kobo Developer's Corner under the Kobo Reader forum.
- pepperoni_pizza 1mo agoPublic 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.
- probably_wrong 1mo agoMildly related side note: my Kindle DX died this year (it won't charge nor reset, even with a new battery) so I've been looking for a replacement. I'd like a second-hand one but, based on my eBay experience, barely anyone is getting rid of their e-readers. Considering how many second-hand computers, tablets, and cell phones are there, I find this surprising.
- themadturk 1mo agoCheck out the Onyx_Boox subreddit. People often put their used Boox devices up for sale (presumably when they buy new ones).
- snapplebobapple 1mo agoEver since i got my x4 and then my x4 pro i d(nt see the allure of these big reasers anymore. Its in my pocket and small enough i foeget a?out it until i need it