"This is not a business you can build in one or two territories," Humphrey emphasized. Even Adobe's DRM, which isn't my favorite thing in the world, gives Kobo's e-readers access to a huge library of e-books from other retailers - including, importantly, all of Sony's.Īs for Barnes & Noble? So far, despite persistent rumors of new partnerships, global expansion, or a Kobo-style spinoff, Nook has been left in the dust on the global stage, its success bottled up in the US. That gives the Kobo Touch - which, if I were starting from scratch, would edge the Kindle Touch and Nook Simple Touch as my favorite E Ink reader - and the Kobo Vox a distinct edge over Amazon.Īlso, with Apple's iBooks turning away from standards-based e-books and towards its own proprietary, non-interoperable formats, it's important that Kobo is sticking with EPUB and continuing to work to develop EPUB 3. It may not be in Japan or the Netherlands, but it has good support for German, French, Spanish, Italian and Brazilian Portuguese.īut Kindle's touch and tablet models are so far slow to follow. On the global stage, after some delay, Amazon's Kindle is now trailing close behind Kobo its new entry-level E Ink Kindle is the first truly multi-language model. Now, the only ones left are Amazon, Kobo and Nook." "Two years ago at CES, there were something like 120 e-readers announced. This is a surprising statement, considering not only Sony's position in Japan, but the difficulties Amazon's faced dealing with Japanese publishers and getting its e-book business there off the ground. "Sony has been in the market in Japan for a long time," Humphrey added, "but to be perfectly candid, the only company we see as a competitor there is Amazon." Now its partners include WH Smith in England, Swindon Books in Hong Kong and Fnac Books in France. After starting as the Shortcovers e-book division of Canada's Indigo Books (now Chapters Indigo), Kobo was spun off in 2009, becoming a joint investment of Indigo, Borders, REDgroup, and Cheung Kong holdings. It comes piece by piece, territory by territory, with little news items with innocuously " Kobo Continues International Expansion Launching In the Netherlands With Libris Blz." Here's why you should care about that second announcement, too.Īmong the major e-book retailers, Kobo is unusual in that it was conceived as a multinational enterprise from the start. This vision of the future can be hard to explain, because it doesn't usually come with giant, orchestrated, triumphant multimedia presentations like last Thursday's Apple iBooks announcement. This is the future - for me, for you, for all of us." But when I look at global publishing, I do the math in my head, I see the pieces coming together, all the different possible futures, the perils of bridging such a fragmented system, and the tremendous payoff for anyone who can pull it off - and I whisper: "Yes. I'm not an insider: I don't fly to the Frankfurt Book Fair and pump publishers for details. I mean in a creepy, stalkerish, guy-who-stares-at-you-too-long-on-the-bus sense. You’ll still have access to your existing audiobook library and will no longer be billed.I may be unhealthily obsessed with global digital publishing. What happens if I don’t reply to the email? Will I lose my audiobook subscription? You won’t be able to cancel your subscription on the Orange or Fnac website. If you unsubscribe before June 21, 2022, you can cancel your audiobook subscription in the Orange app or on. What happens if I cancel my Orange audiobook subscription? Your entire audiobook library will automatically transfer to your Fnac account. Will my audiobook library automatically move from from my Orange account to Fnac? Your Orange sign-in credentials will work on Fnac. You’ll need to sign in using your Fnac credentials. You can continue to listen to audiobooks on the Kobo by Fnac app. Will I have to use a different app to listen to audiobooks on Fnac? The earliest you can sign up for your audiobook subscription by Fnac is on June 22, 2022.
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