Should Kobo have a Send to Kobo like Kindle?

[graycyn]

Originally Posted by Quoth

1. The finger and text touch keyboard annotation on epub exports by various methods. Don't annotate epubs by pen. Export is via USB plain text.

Oh, I agree, and I would never do any serious notes on an epub using the stylus. But you've got a half ton of folks with shiny new styluses and Libra Colours in their hands and a great many of them are excited about the idea of doing their notes directly on their epubs/kepubs.

They are happy NOW, but will they be happy later when they realize their notes, their thoughts done in this way, can't be exported or backed up? Or worse, when they break a screen or lose their device and lose all their notes? I'm guessing not so much.

At any rate, I don't really see Kobo offering Send-to-Kobo, and it's not something *I* need. I'm more in favor of Kobo adding improvements/features to the UI. I'd love to see a right side swipe to adjust the comfort light for instance. Or have them develop a remote page-turner. I'd use both!

But I'm not against such a feature. As I said when I voted, I think it would bring Kobo more customers. They are getting the customers now, but those folks might well run right back to Amazon and take their friends with them if they catastrophically lost their notes.

I mean, I know screenshots can be enabled on Kobo, how hard would it have been to add something like that to the UI natively, as a way to preserve the handwritten notes? Perhaps more difficult than I realize, but then again, perhaps not.

[issybird]

I've been Team Kobo since I migrated from Sony; it's only been a couple of years since I've even had Kindles. And while at this point, my MO is to direct download to the proprietary devices from the Kobo and Kindle stores, I have to say that when it's a book outside those parameters as in public domain from wherever, my tendency is to use STK. Instantaneous, no tethering, syncs across devices. Why wouldn't you?

That said:

Originally Posted by graycyn

At any rate, I don't really see Kobo offering Send-to-Kobo, and it's not something *I* need. I'm more in favor of Kobo adding improvements/features to the UI. I'd love to see a right side swipe to adjust the comfort light for instance. Or have them develop a remote page-turner. I'd use both!

This is also true for me. I can get along without Send-to-Kobo and just as well since I also don't think it's happening. And oh, a remote page-turner! I'm there. My hands get so darned cold in the winter. If I could keep them under a blanket? That would beat STK any time.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by issybird

I've been Team Kobo since I migrated from Sony; it's only been a couple of years since I've even had Kindles. And while at this point, my MO is to direct download to the proprietary devices from the Kobo and Kindle stores, I have to say that when it's a book outside those parameters as in public domain from wherever, my tendency is to use STK. Instantaneous, no tethering, syncs across devices. Why wouldn't you?

As for myself, for several reasons. First, I want the metadata, series information and collections to be transferred over from Calibre; only possible with the USB transfer, not with a STK-like service. Second, I often transfer many new books to my Kobos at once, 20-50 or even more - this is because I won't load anything until I've edited the metadata and the formatting. Sending that many books via STK would be a pain, and because I keep wifi off on my ereaders, never instantaneous. It would be much slower than loading them via USB.

I never download anything directly - as I said, I edit the metadata and the formatting of all my ebooks and never read a book until I've done that. So I only ever use the copies in Calibre for reading, not the originals on Kobo or Amazon servers.

Those are my personal reasons for not wanting to use Send to Kobo. I'm well aware that many people would love to have it, though.

[Quoth]

I'm not against Kobo providing it per-se, if no downsides.

Would you like a "Send to Kobo" service like Kindle?

As in me using, it? No I'd never use it, thus I personally wouldn't "like" it.

[tomsem]

I think they would do well to have such a service: Apple, Google, and PocketBook all do.

If anything, Apple and PocketBook are more convenient than Send To Kindle: just open a book (side-load, share from cloud storage etc) and it uploads to library where it can be accessed from any linked device/app. It is something I make use of, just as I do when reading third party content on Kindle platform.

In my continuing quest to expand my horizons beyond Kindle, I'm thinking of getting a Clara Colour. While not having such a service is not a deal breaker, it doesn't check any boxes, either. It would be 'nice to have'.

[Quoth]

I had an Apple 4S for a while. Sideloading (which worked on Linux) only worked with some 3rd party apps. I could only use the Apple music player by using iTunes on Windows.

Apple is so walled they have to provide iCloud. I'll not ever get any Apple product again.

Kindle has also got more restrictive. Collections and Series is now broken if you have older and newer Kindles. You used to be able to manage collections from PC. Amazon seem to want you to use their web site. You can't set series at all and it's often wrong or missing on Amazon. See also how Amazon Scribe PDF/KFX works compared to really simple Kobo via USB (Sage, Elipsa etc).

I don't mind what Kobo add as long as current brilliant ability to manage everything via Windows/Mac/Linux is not affected.

So Apple and Amazon are really bad examples as the products are crippled without the vendor's remote server and a decent internet connection.

[tomsem]

Yes, it is going to be a real problem when civilization inevitably ceases to exist.

[Gone]

Not sure at all if some people from Kobo ever visit this forum, but if they do, I hope they noticed that in general, a good amount of users would be in favor of some mechanism to send their ebooks OTA to their Kobo.

[PeterT]

A proportion of a very small set of users which I doubt is representative of the typical user

Sent from my Pixel 7a using Tapatalk

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by PeterT

A proportion of a very small set of users which I doubt is representative of the typical user

it's a case where I suspect the typical user would appreciate it more than users here.

[John Hopper]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

As for myself, for several reasons. First, I want the metadata, series information and collections to be transferred over from Calibre; only possible with the USB transfer, not with a STK-like service. Second, I often transfer many new books to my Kobos at once, 20-50 or even more - this is because I won't load anything until I've edited the metadata and the formatting. Sending that many books via STK would be a pain, and because I keep wifi off on my ereaders, never instantaneous. It would be much slower than loading them via USB.



I never download anything directly - as I said, I edit the metadata and the formatting of all my ebooks and never read a book until I've done that. So I only ever use the copies in Calibre for reading, not the originals on Kobo or Amazon servers.



Those are my personal reasons for not wanting to use Send to Kobo. I'm well aware that many people would love to have it, though.

Exactly all this for me too.

Sent from my Pixel Fold using Tapatalk

[milady133]

I'm using (and paying for a subscription) Bookfusion on my Android devices (apart from my phone, I have an eink phone, the Hisense5, that I use as an ereader for when I'm out and about). But as much as I would like Kobo to synch my sideloaded books, I wouldn't vote for it because given the difficulties they are experiencing right now to synch just my collections, is going to take them years to get the synching tuned up enough to make it usable for me.

I'm using my Kobos with an empty account because they're not capable to synch my collections. I'm one of the ones affected by the bug that gets the synching stuck because I have collections with lots of books (bought from Kobo and sideloaded), so I needed to repair my account every few weeks/months and sign out/sign in again to get the synching going again, I filled a report bug, but it's difficult to find the problem because it's a very specific use case and you need time to reproduce it, so I finally gave up and now I sideload all my books.
This is only to synch collections, so I don't want to deal with all the problems that books from all kinds of sources might present.

For Amazon is easier, they already have the resources and developers to make this project manageable, but Kobo doesn't have that, and will have to outsource it. Just look at the posts in this forum for problems with Pocket, and there's not so many people interested in that integration compared to people that might find synching books useful.

[Cootey]

I believe that Kobo has already showed their solution for Send-to-Kobo: other companies’ cloud drives.

I can save a book to either Google Drive or Dropbox and moments later download it onto my Kobo, or I can save a book to a specific folder in iCloud which Calibre monitors on my Mac and then download it using Calibre’s web server.

None of those options sync directly to the Kobo library as Send-to-Kindle does for Kindles, but they are all over-the-air solutions.

Without sideloaded ebook sync support, however, I personally see little utility for send-to-Kobo over the cloud drive solutions. I read a (legally purchased) sideloaded epub recently that I annotated on my gorgeous new Libra Colour, but it irks me that I’m one database glitch away from losing all those annotations, and they don’t sync to my Kobo Elipsa.

So I would personally rather see sideloaded annotation syncing before Send-to-Kobo. However, as was just pointed out above me, Kobo’s syncing leaves a lot to be desired. Never mind between iOS annotations and Kobo device annotations, even Kobo to Kobo syncing is spotty. The only reliable sync is last page read and bookmarks. Annotations are a dice roll.

⁂

Spoiler:

Interesting discussion, even with the drama. I learned that Send-to-Kindle isn’t for their own formats (https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/). I barely use the service for my Kindle and just never noticed.

I learned that Quoth last used an iPhone 4S(!!). My iPhone 15 Pro is a bit further along the evolutionary path, but Apple’s iCloud services are still walled, it’s true. I no longer buy any Apple Books bc I can’t strip the DRM, but I find iCloud to be quite stable and useful.

And I learned there is a mysterious service out there called STK! It’s not steak, it’s not a mobile phone, and it’s not “Software for Digital Mission Engineering and Systems Analysis”. Or maybe it is. I don’t know. Those are the only solutions the search engine offers me.

[Frogm4n]

Originally Posted by Cootey

I learned that Send-to-Kindle isn’t for their own formats (https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/).

(...)

And I learned there is a mysterious service out there called STK!

STK = Send to Kindle

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by Frogm4n

STK = Send to Kindle

ROFL I see I’m guilty of overthinking things again! Unfortunately for me, that didn’t come up in the search before I embarrassed myself.
¯＼(º_O)/¯