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From the Kobo blog:

At Kobo, we believe you should be able to read anytime, anyplace and on any device, and that’s been our mission from day one. We’re excited to share that Kobo will be developing apps for the Windows 8 app store when it opens.

We are thrilled to be part of the Windows Store preview this afternoon in San Francisco, and believe that our upcoming Windows app will bring Windows 8 users a next-generation reading experience with access to one of the world’s largest bookstores of over 2.5 eBooks – which includes more than 1 million free titles to download and read for free.

For more information on the Windows Store, visit the Windows Newsroom. Plus, download Kobo’s popular free eReading apps for smartphones, tablets, desktops and laptops can be downloaded here.

(Via Kobo.)

10 COMMENTS

  1. The ebook revolution was not consumer driven, it was industry driven. There was no inherent market for screen books. Among industry calculations was an intention to provide a shopping device. The book reading simulation is something of a decoy.

    Only now are consumer laments emerging. Black electrophoric e-ink and button navigation did provide a reasonable simulation of book reading. Industry agendas are now moving away from book dedication toward multifunction entertainment.The color phosphor screen and touch screen navigation is the path of least resistance of a large installed base. Color e-ink development has faded.

    The lament is among dedicated book readers over the eclipse of the dedicated black device. The ebook revolution continues to be industry, not consumer driven.

  2. Gary, I’m not sure what you’re on about. People were reading ebooks on phones long before there were dedicated readers. Even after dedicated readers arrived, companies continued to create ebook readers for phones. It’s just in the last few years of Microsoft’s slide in popularity with smartphones that companies have decided not to upgrade their Windows ebook apps.

    Now a company has decided to offer a new Windows-based reading app to go with all the Blackberry, Android and iPod/iPad apps already out there. It has nothing to do with eInk or tablets or selling; it has to do with convenient reading.

  3. Gary you could not be more wrong. The eReading revolution is completely customer driven, with publishers being dragged kicking and screaming into the future.
    eReading is a fantastically successful experience, loved by everyone who tries it, and the tired old ‘real readers do it on paper’ line is dead and buried. Leave it to rest in peace.

  4. Steven,

    I agree that convenience and connectivity are great drivers of screen delivery. I also agree that the phone is a more effective incubation niche for screen book reading and has been for a long time as you point out.

    My point was that device delivery for books is promoted by industry as it uses non-phone device lock-in of consumers for a wide range of marketing beyond books, including magazines, news sites as well as much wider product genres. The consumer is more interested in reading from more portable and conveniently always with you devices.

  5. Howard,

    Publishers have nothing to do with it. Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Google, Microsoft are the industrial agencies driving screen based book reading. And I suggest that ebooks as mimes of print books will die out sooner than paperbooks.

  6. I’m afraid you are wrong again Gary. The public drove and are driving the eReading revolution. The reading public. The idea the Amazon etc or Apple push customers to do what they are reluctant to do is a ridiculous fiction. They are uber-successful because they deliver to the public what the public want. The demand is from the public, the hunger for a far superior reading experience is from the public; from readers. The Kindle, iPhone, iPad etc are now delivering what the reader has been hungry for and paper is winding it’s way down a one way lane to the grave, thank goodness. Paper as a medium has had a magnificent run, but the cost and shipping and bulk and weight and limitations in a modern world has consigned it to history as a mass media medium.

  7. Hum…? We are discussing book delivery. The book now spans both print and screen formats. Close attention to this circumstance of mixed delivery options reveals a surprisingly complementary and interdependent relation of affordances and a third stance going forward. At the moment eBOOK units sold (English language) are about 5-10% compared with print units 90-95%. Percent of revenue (to publishers, not aggregators) is much more print predominant.

    Percent of titles allocation is also interesting only 2-3% tops are exclusive to screen. (if you want to count self-publish print-on-demand will dominate). Percent exclusive to print is maybe 20% (a guess). Percent released to both ca. 75%. There is interesting interplay in the dual releases with both playing preview roles for the sales of the other.

    The logistic and distribution costs are not weighted in screen favor. Pre-press costs dominate all book production (about 80%) and separated storage and display costs for screen delivery are passed on to the screen consumer (aggregators are making more on ebooks than publishers).

    You can say that paper books are obsolete and that screen books dominate the future, but evidence indicates the exact opposite.

  8. Very interesting post Gary – but In my humble opinion (with respect) you just proved how fast the eBook is spreading and dumping on paper. eBooks are only really in the mass market for a couple of years or so … yet they have already reached incredible numbers, as evidenced by your numbers.
    Another 5 – 7 years and paper will be niche.

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