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Rakuten Kobo returns to U.S. retail as sales double

105 pointsposted 2 days ago

117 Comments

Night_Thastus

2 days ago

I 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

2 days ago

How 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.

seam_carver

2 days ago

I 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

kmfrk

2 days ago

That 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

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/@NicoVerbruggen/videos

themadturk

2 days ago

Thanks! I'll be looking at this very soon. I'd heard of it, but hadn't ever looked its features.

Night_Thastus

2 days ago

As 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.

illwrks

2 days ago

As far as I'm aware, the colour screen devices have two processors, so that probably accounts for the real difference in processing speed.

chocochunks

2 days ago

Libra Colour has a much better chipset than previous Kobo devices. It is very usable for PDF.

jjice

2 days ago

I 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.

criddell

2 days ago

> Amazon was locking down getting your own epubs onto the device

Curious about what has changed? I've only ever used the email method and that continues to work.

thg

2 days ago

It no longer does for the first few generations of Kindles. My Kindle Keyboard (16 years old, but it still works and I still use it almost daily) is essentially a useless paperweight now, as far as Amazon is concerned. De-registering it will brick it and they shut down the "send file to e-mail" service, too. Can no longer buy and download books off Amazon either (they shut that down in 2024, afaik).

If not for Calibre, I would have absolutely no option of ever getting new books on it.

vdnkh

2 days ago

So it still works as a generic ereader via Calibre? That seems like a pretty fine outcome. I don't think Amazon (or any company) should be on the hook supporting a device for 16 years. I can't think of any company which does. Dropping support for old devices frees up eng resources. If you've ever worked in a shop needing to support legacy devices, it becomes a huge burden to keep up support (especially as the supporting software/hardware starts to degrade, like 3P updates) for what becomes an increasingly small number of users. Of course, if the number of users remains significant, support should be maintained.

shrubby

2 days ago

I've decided with all my commercial e-readers that the USB+calibre is my only option as I do not wish to share my reading habits with the zillionaire overlord.

There might be new and fancy UI or something, but I spend 99% of the time only flipping pages so the outdated UX is nothing compared to the privacy I get.

Ancient Basic Kindle works still nicely and so does 1st gen Paperwhite + the few Kobo's we have in the family.

bix6

2 days ago

Same here re email. Though I’m considering switching to kobo anyways cuz Bezos sucks.

toomuchtodo

2 days ago

I have been hoping for an open e-reader to be built, and it appears someone is building one: https://hackaday.com/2026/07/14/open-book-touch-makes-crowd-... (Joey Castillo’s Open Book project, no affiliation, I just like open/sovereign tech stacks)

> But what you won’t get is locked down with DRM — the Open Book Touch uses standard EPUB and TXT files loaded from a micro SD card, and thanks to the WiFi-enabled ESP32 at its heart, it offers up a web interface that lets you manage your collection over the network.

Kobo works great in my experience though for those looking for a turnkey open-ish commercial solution.

Uncle_Brumpus

2 days ago

I read on the original Openbook lite, which despite only accepting .txt files, is still a great little device. I'm excited to get the touch and not have to pre-format massive files in a text editor.

Fire-Dragon-DoL

a day ago

We have kindle scribe and a kobo at home, the kobo experience has been way more rough for epubs. On amazon all I do is access amazon.ca/sendtokindle and I can upload the same epub to my phone and ereader AND keep the current page in sync. The experience with the Kobo is absolutely not even close to that.

And I agree with you I don't like the lock in factor, but I felt more locked on a Kobo than on a Kindle

expedition32

2 days ago

Amazon heavily subsidises the Kindle calculating they can make the money back with selling books. That's why you can get one for 70 euro.

dominotw

2 days ago

what 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.

JoeBOFH

2 days ago

Amazon is making it harder and harder to copy third party books onto the devices.

dominotw

2 days ago

by doing what? i do it all that time. did one this morning.

skydhash

2 days ago

I 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.

allannienhuis

2 days ago

using https://www.amazon.com/sendtokindle it's trivial. I just bought the Greg Bear humble bundle (27 epub books), dragged all of them in one step, clicked the submit button and that was it. Books showed up on my paperwhite kindle in a moment. Couldn't have been easier. Books sent that way don't disappear from your device as far as I can tell - I've done similar large batch uploads for ages, and they're all still in my library, and available on all of my devices.

Gud

2 days ago

Why should Amazon be involved at all? Why should they know my reading habits?

allannienhuis

2 days ago

Sure, those are fair questions, but they've got nothing to do with the comment I was responding to, which was about the problems with reading (originally) epub books on a kindle.

Gud

a day ago

It sounds like the comment you replied to is aware of that, but prefer his (sisters) kindle to remain functional with USB transfer, hence airplane mode to prevent any unwanted software updates.

kubik369

2 days ago

> i read third party epubs on kindle all the time.

No, you do not. Kindle has never and, as far as I am aware, to this day, does not support epubs. The only way to read epubs on your Kindle is to convert them either by Amazon's Send to Kindle service or through software like Calibre.

ssl-3

2 days ago

It has the appearance of working like this:

  1.  Epub of a book exists on a computer
  2.  User takes simple action to read that book on a Kindle device
  3.  ???
  4.  User succeeds at reading that same book

When step 3 is basically invisible, "reading an epub on a kindle" seems like a rational way to view things.

Like when Github invisibly renders Markdown into HTML for display in my browser: It seems rational to say that I'm reading a Markdown document.

Or when I print that same HTML onto paper and read it. I'm not reading the HTML nor the Postscript intermediates: I'm still reading a Markdown document.

dominotw

2 days ago

dont care about all that. ppl are really reaching here by moving goalposts .

themadturk

2 days ago

It's good that it works for you. Before unloading my Kindle, I was getting over 50% failures when side loading books via Send To Kindle. These were all ePubs that have subsequently worked fine on Kobo. That was completely unacceptable, and I was uncomfortable with the amount of control Amazon was exerting over the platform.

I don't hate Amazon, but I was not willing any longer to give them knowledge and control over my reading.

dominotw

a day ago

send to kindle is not sideloading

Pfhortune

2 days ago

I 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.

koalp

2 days ago

It’s nice that they have it but strange that it’s hidden.

It would be better if it was an option on the setup screen, and even better if it was the default option and if the login screen was in the parameters.

Because as an hidden option I always fear that they remove it and that we have to find an alternative. And so far DIY e-reader do not seem great.

Pfhortune

2 days ago

I do agree, but I am glad the option exists, in contrast with competing readers on the market. And I am very glad that it is an option that requires zero talking to activation servers or other infra.

The way they implemented this means that these Kobos can always avoid being e-waste even if Kobo disappears. Assuming they don't maliciously remove it, that is, but seeing as it was added fairly recently and is fairly obscure, I doubt they would bother doing so for current and past devices.

> And so far DIY e-reader do not seem great.

Being generous and expanding DIY to mean any "open" or "modifiable" reader, this ecosystem has actually be rapidly improving in quality and selection recently. A few new devices were announced recently, and I'm particularly interested in the new M5Stack offering since it has a frontlight and LoRA.

https://liliputing.com/lilbits-more-phone-sized-e-ink-gadget...

I wish I could recommend any Android-based readers, but the software ecosystem for them is quite poor. I would immediately purchase one if they offered a verifiably-clean AOSP or LineageOS option.

rationalist

2 days ago

I 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

2 days ago

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

2 days ago

Thank you

lynndotpy

2 days ago

Yep, this is the reason I chose a Kobo.

strictnein

2 days ago

Interesting 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

2 days ago

Personally, 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"

derefr

2 days ago

> I want to read about dudes and ladies with huge swords and magic killing dragons and conquering kingdoms

If you're okay with these characters and kingdoms existing in vaguely-medieval China (with magically-empowered monks and Taoist-Buddhist symbolism) rather than vaguely-medieval Europe (with magically-empowered knights and Christian symbolism), then I think you'd be very happy to learn about the genre of xianxia (lit. "immortal heroes"). Unlike the Western high fantasy, xianxia fiction is at a peak of popularity right now, with tons of new stories getting published each month.

As you might guess by the name, at first this was only a literary movement in China; but these days there are tons of English-language xianxia stories as well. And they're not necessarily being written in Chinese and then translated, as you might guess; there are some Western authors writing in this genre too.

---

That being said: while you can find some xianxia stories in published physical form in stores, as a "new media" genre being written mostly by younger digital-native people, most xianxia stories are first being published digitally online as serial fiction.

Among websites where these serials are published, https://wuxiaworld.com is popular for authors writing in Chinese (I believe the site offers professional translation services to authors), while https://royalroad.com is popular for authors writing in English.

Also, as a "new media" genre, these stories are "not well understood" by traditional publishers (i.e. they don't know how to market them), so these stories tend to need to achieve a very high level of popularity before the traditional publishers are willing to engage with them. So even when these authors do produce novelizations of their originally-serial stories, they often end up finding no physical publisher willing to pick them up, and instead end up self-publishing only for digital distribution through Kindle/iBooks/etc.

bluefirebrand

2 days ago

I like wuxia films quite a bit so I bet I would like this too. I don't own an e-reader or anything but I'll see what I can find. Thank you for the kind recommendation

kevin_thibedeau

2 days ago

Bookstores aren't for you. As you've seen, they cater to a certain type of customer now. Similar to how department stores are biased to one type of customer and dedicate much more floor space to them.

There are plenty of old books in the genres you like waiting to be read. Some of them will be in digital format. None of them will be AI dreck.

stevenwoo

a day ago

The first book in The First Law series was published in 2006 and the last in 2021, it’s kinda like pulp noir fantasy combined, I am guessing you haven’t read those based the age you listed but could be wrong.

BigTTYGothGF

2 days ago

Give this a try: https://www.blackgate.com

> I'm greeted by the likes of "Morning Glory Milking Farm"

The genre survived John Norman and Jack Chalker, it can handle a little sex stuff aimed at women. I haven't read that book, but I have read "In the Barn", from famous award-winning anthology "Again, Dangerous Visions" and as such one really has to lean into the dairy-themed smut for me to raise an eyebrow.

TFNA

2 days ago

I interpreted the OP as complaining not that romance took over specifically his subgenre of fantasy, but rather it has taken over bookshops and related venues completely.

You can see this on Goodreads, which in decades past saw active community about all kinds of literature, but now is overwhelmingly centered around romance and romantasy novels. There must still be a lot of people out there who read other stuff than romance (or genre fiction in general), but I'll be damned if I know where they can hang out and feel community online, let alone IRL. Literary blogs are few and have largely retreated into Substack, which is a pathological for-profit corporate platform. Goodreads is declining because its old tech was less attractive to younger readers. Competitors to GR like Storygraph tend to be designed mainly for fiction instead of the full range of things an erudite person might read.

bluefirebrand

2 days ago

My point is more that as a middle aged dude that grew up reading, the current publishing industry feels awfully hostile to me.

I grew up on Redwall, Riftwar, Dragonlance, Mercedes Lackey and Troy Gibson and probably a few others that I'm forgetting now.

Nowadays they would probably be criticized as being too generic or too slow or not engaging enough or whatever but I loved them

Actually, thinking about it. All of the big ones I mentioned were about worlds. The individual books often introduced different and new characters and parts of the world. Time passed in the settings.

Nowadays I feel I pick up a fantasy book and it's always a 3-5 book series following one particular person and I'm just so much less interested in it. Salvatore cured me of that.

But this Blackgate looks interesting. I'll take a closer look when I'm home. Thank you for the recommendation. Love your username too, gave me a good laugh when I saw it.

BigTTYGothGF

2 days ago

> My point is more that as a middle aged dude that grew up reading, the current publishing industry feels awfully hostile to me.

I too am a middle aged dude who grew up reading and I think there's a simple explanation for that feeling: we got old. The market has moved on and left us behind. It happened to the ancients, and it will happen to the young.

> Nowadays they would probably be criticized

I don't know who Troy Gibson is, and Redwall generally got a pass because of the target audience, but all the rest certainly got tons of criticism from readers at the time. Riftwar was too generic and RPG-like. Dragonlance was also generic and the RPG elements were only barely pasted over. Mercedes Lackey was repetitive, you read one you've read them all. (Did I read all three of those in my teens and enjoy them a bunch? I certainly did).

> Nowadays I feel I pick up a fantasy book and it's always a 3-5 book series following one particular person and I'm just so much less interested in it.

We had those back in our youth as well, most notably the now-almost-forgotten Thomas Covenant books.

> All of the big ones I mentioned were about worlds. The individual books often introduced different and new characters and parts of the world. Time passed in the settings.

Glancing over at my bookshelf, you might like the trilogy starting with "Range of Ghosts" by Elizabeth Bear (the 2nd trilogy is fine, the third book kind of fizzles out, and its biggest sin is establishing a character who's basically "Miles Vorkosigan, except a villain" and then not leaning hard into that).

Ultimately tho this plus "dudes and ladies with huge swords and magic killing dragons and conquering kingdoms" means you really should start reading Malazan. It's not perfect (parts of it are rapey, and the later books, especially Toll the Hounds, can be really pretentious) but it is the sprawling epic fantasy with a cast of thousands.

Dudes and ladies with huge swords? Check. And magic? Check. Killing dragons? Check. Conquering kingdoms? Well, there's a lot of attempts to reverse previous conquests and stop ongoing conquests, so I'll give that a chek.

bluefirebrand

2 days ago

Thank you for the recommendations.

And I somehow warped "Larry Dixon" into "Troy Gibson" in my brain

Absolutely embarrassing. I dislike getting old :)

I asked my wife to put some of those books on hold at the library for me though. I'll check them out. :)

cattenwallen

2 days ago

I 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.

strictnein

2 days ago

I used to read a ton of that stuff too and I really miss it. Terry Brooks type stuff. Enjoyable adventures that focus on a small group of characters. I also don't want overly complex worlds and stories for that type of book. The rest of my life is already too complex as it is.

chocochunks

2 days ago

Dragonlance is still around. A new book came out this month, War Wizard. There's still Forgotten Realms books too. And lots of books about people in parties that aren't DnD spin-offs.

jm4

2 days ago

Love 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

2 days ago

Does 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

2 days ago

Not 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

2 days ago

You're right, Goodreads is owned by Amazon. Somehow didn't think about this, but they'd of course lock it down lol

mingus88

2 days ago

Kobo integrates with Libby/Overdrive which I prefer anyway. I maintain lists and progress with my public library subscription

Insanity

2 days ago

Cool that you prefer Libby, but saying "use tool X instead" is not really a solution to wanting to use "tool Y". :D

mingus88

a day ago

Because The implied answer is no, it doesn’t support goodreads; that functionality is supported by Overdrive

I thought that was obvious but here you are, since you need that spelled out. Goodreads is owned by Amazon. Overdrive is for public libraries everywhere, so the choice of which is better should be pretty clear as well

MattTheRealOne

a day ago

No, as Amazon bought Goodreads. Kobo did recently partner with StoryGraph though.

chocochunks

2 days ago

Guess who owns Goodreads. Amazon, so no. They did add support for StoryGraph which is similar recently.

hn_submit

2 days ago

Amazon 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.

criddell

2 days ago

The camel is doing just fine. Amazon ereaders have 70+% market share.

hn_submit

2 days ago

The 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

2 days ago

Globally, 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-dominan...

kitd

2 days ago

Fun fact: I searched for Kobo Clara on Amazon, and the algorithm has labelled it "Amazon's choice". A subtle agreement with you maybe :)

ryanmcbride

2 days ago

My 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.

guillybarres

2 days ago

70% women is about what I see in bookstores, and frequently the main display cases are geared towards genres more popular among women, like romantasy.

pepperoni_pizza

2 days ago

Public 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.

int32_64

2 days ago

If you aren't reading comics I wouldn't recommend color e-readers yet. The screens are dimmer and have a noticeable filter over them.

criddell

2 days ago

I switched to buying books from Kobo this year because removing DRM from books bought at Amazon is getting too difficult and unreliable.

mparnisari

2 days ago

Kobo 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

2 days ago

Of 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

2 days ago

Some people like supporting the authors of the books they read.

TFNA

2 days ago

Only 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.

miladyincontrol

2 days ago

A 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

2 days ago

What 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

2 days ago

Acetone or black marker will fix that.

rationalist

2 days ago

Maybe 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.

TFNA

2 days ago

Kobo covers are the main way people get that aesthetic oomph.

Hasz

2 days ago

Kobo 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.

alpineman

2 days ago

No one reasonable wants to support Bezos and his Melania funding

probably_wrong

2 days ago

Mildly 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

2 days ago

Check out the Onyx_Boox subreddit. People often put their used Boox devices up for sale (presumably when they buy new ones).

hosel

2 days ago

Is 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

qlte

a day ago

Boox 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.

criddell

2 days ago

I'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

2 days ago

Sage was discontinued already some time ago.

erghjunk

2 days ago

I 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.

usern20260720

2 days ago

I 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

2 days ago

I 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!

snapplebobapple

a day ago

Ever 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

throwaway173738

2 days ago

Is 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

2 days ago

Aren'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?

hedgehog

2 days ago

Does 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

2 days ago

There's an active dev community over at Mobileread.com. Look for the Kobo Developer's Corner under the Kobo Reader forum.

fred_is_fred

2 days ago

I 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.

cosmic_cheese

2 days ago

They’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

2 days 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-testin...

[1]: https://pgaskin.net/kepubify/

cosmic_cheese

2 days ago

Interesting, 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

2 days ago

Calibre can also do that for you transparently when loading the files onto the Kobo.

rpdillon

2 days ago

I 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!

juiceland

2 days ago

It’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

Seattle3503

2 days ago

How do you like your Boox device?

frm88

a day ago

I 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

a day ago

I'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.

genericuser256

2 days ago

I liked my boox palma a lot until its display broke randomly after 2 months in a soft pocket and now it's ewaste.

fred_is_fred

2 days ago

It's busybox underneath so you can hack on it but you can't run full apps in the Android sense.

delecti

2 days ago

You can't SSH into kindles anymore? I know that used to be a thing.

qlte

a day ago

If they're jailbroken.

throwawayk7h

2 days ago

I hacked my old kindle from a decade ago, highly recommended to anyone who wants to unlock it. There are guides online.

unethical_ban

2 days ago

If 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

2 days ago

I 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.