Flag_of_Turkey.svgDigital Book World is carrying a press release from Rakuten announcing that its Kobo subsidiary is rolling out Kobo devices and e-books to Turkey via a partnership with Turkish bookstore chain D&R. The press release is full of the usual glittering generalities about how happy Kobo and D&R are to be working with each other, bringing a catalog of 15,000 Turkish-language e-books and 4.7 million e-books overall to the Turkish people.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the story is a reminder that the developed e-book markets in places like the US and the UK aren’t the whole of e-publishing, and there are still plenty of areas even in the developed world that are still years behind the curve. Hopefully this partnership works out well for D&R and doesn’t lead to them going the way of Kobo’s former partner, Borders.

2 COMMENTS

  1. > Hopefully this partnership works out well for D&R and doesn’t lead to them going the way of Kobo’s former partner, Borders.

    Kobo already has a large number of partners all over the world. One hopes that means they have enough experience to ensure that doesn’t happen. Not that there are any guarantees.

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