Kobo in trouble in Canada and the US

[Canuck_in_Japan]

Wait, Kobo likes agency pricing? I thought it was the opposite way around! Why do they keep giving out so many ridiculous discount coupons if they don't want the customers getting cheap books?

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by Canuck_in_Japan

Wait, Kobo likes agency pricing? I thought it was the opposite way around! Why do they keep giving out so many ridiculous discount coupons if they don't want the customers getting cheap books?

They don't let people in the US use the coupons on the big publishers, and I think the same is true for Canada. They allowed the coupons for a short time and then cut them off.

[Alfy]

Also, agency pricing is good for retailers that can't compete with Amazon on price. Of course, whether that is good for the customer is debatable, although the choice is increasingly between paying more to keep retailers afloat, or getting a "fair" price (and it remains my belief that ebooks are still overpriced) but seing most of the retailers go belly up. Before ebooks came along, I had never realized how crappy the whole publishing/retailing business was.

[tlaine]

Publishers (big & small, paper & ebook) have gouged Canadians for a long time.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Alfy

Also, agency pricing is good for retailers that can't compete with Amazon on price.

Unless they're Books on Board or CyberRead...

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Alfy

Also, agency pricing is good for retailers that can't compete with Amazon on price.

.

It is so "good" for them that Nook went from 27% to maybe 10% under the conspiracy and Amazon likely ratched up its share a few points. It is so good, it killed Booksonboard and a bunch of other small ebookstores.

One more time: if BPH titles cost the same everywhere, then consumers will choose their preferred bookstore on other issues. Like customer service, quality of website, quality of reading software, return policies, and depth of catalog. And it helps to have visibility beyond hobbyists and with the general public.

Generally, vendors that claim not to be able to compete on price are the same ones that don't know how to compete on the other issues either. It's a smokescreen.

[bookfanmd]

Originally Posted by issybird

Only a little better at best. I just had to get a replacement Glo and while they did mail it to me before I had to return the old one, with both Amazon and Barnes & Noble, the replacement reader comes with a prepaid label to return the faulty one. With Kobo I had to pick up the tab. And with Amazon and B&N, it takes one phone call to get the exchange going, while with Kobo, it took several back-and-forths with CS and, yes, it included my taking pictures, before they agreed to a replacement.

The single biggest issue with Kobo's CS (and there are many) is that the first level contact at CS is empowered to do nothing at all except give boilerplate responses expressing regret at your frustration and suggesting a soft reset and then a hard one. Days can go by without progressing past that point. By the time they start to get serious, you'd have already received your replacement from Amazon or B&N.

Unfortunately, Kobo is last man standing irt ePub readers in the US. I don't think lack of competition will improve things. And as said above, the collection issues alone at Kindle make it an unappealing alternative.

I just had the same experience. Kobo Aura HD broke, it took multiple calls, emails with photos and 2 weeks to get a replacement and I had to pay $10 in postage to return the broken reader. With Amazon I would have had the replacement within 2 days of the first call and a return label. The customer service staff is very pleasant but their policies are terrible.

[rollei]

Will be great if Kobo allow coupons on the big publishers in Canada.

I buy paperbacks from Walmart and other stores at 30% or 25% off and when I switched to e-book, I need to pay full price for the big publishers' books.

The Kobo coupons come in nice but not available for use with big publishers.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by rollei

Will be great if Kobo allow coupons on the big publishers in Canada.

I buy paperbacks from Walmart and other stores at 30% or 25% off and when I switched to e-book, I need to pay full price for the big publishers' books.

The Kobo coupons come in nice but not available for use with big publishers.

They do have sales on major publisher books:

http://www.kobo.com/springpromotion?style=onestore

At least for the US feed.

They had an 80 percent off deal before that one. They have other promo pages too and generally there is a book a day on sale that is discounted down to 2.99 or less.

It would be nice if big publishers had more bargains...yes, that would be nice! I sometimes wait a long time for a book!

For the book of the day that is on sale, there are a few sites that mention it (Books on the Knob is one, for example) although you can certainly go direct to Kobo and look.

[JoHunt]

I thought it was publishers and not booksellers who do not allow their books to be discounted

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by joehunt

I thought it was publishers and not booksellers who do not allow their books to be discounted

It is the publishers in general. I am not sure if kobo could offer coupons for the big publishers. It could be they are not allowed, but it also could partially be that they do not want to sacrifice too small a margin. I know sometimes Amazon will show something as discounted that is on my wishlist--and it's discounted an entire 10 cents...

[fjtorres]

Kobo's rationale for demanding Agency be restored in Canada is that their contracts guaranteeing 30% margins go away.

http://www.mondaq.com/canada/x/31079...enge+explained

A bit more interesting:

Kobo says that unlike in the US, the shift to agency in Canada was not driven by a conspiracy among publishers, but rather, by Kobo itself in its negotiations with publishers. Kobo's Chief Content Officer, Michael Tamblin, says that the shift to agency in Canada did not happen simultaneously with Apple's entry, but afterwards. He says that Kobo had to press the publishers to move to agency.

Indigo Books & Music Inc. has applied for leave to intervene in support of Kobo. Indigo's CEO Heather Reisman says, in an affidavit, that the settlement threatens to give Amazon a monopoly or near monopoly over the sale of ebooks in Canada.

The Competition Bureau, in its response, contends that Kobo is simply trying to protect the guaranteed 30% margin it has under its existing contracts, and keep prices from falling.

Bold mine.
Uh, itsy-bitsy problem: there is documentary evidence from the US trial (page 12 of the ruling, if memory serves) that the publishers conspired horizontally in Canada, too. The evidence shows they wanted a Canadian retailer to do as Apple did, and coordinate for them. They mentioned Indigo (then-owner of Kobo) as their preferred secret go-between.

[rollei]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

They do have sales on major publisher books:

http://www.kobo.com/springpromotion?style=onestore

They have sales on major publishers too in Canada. But most of the time, the books I wanted in not on that sale list.