Kobo store price comparisons

chrisridd · 11-29-2023, 01:36 PM

I wrote a little perl script to help me find which Kobo "country" store gives the cheapest prices for a book. It might be helpful to others.

GitHub gist

To use it, find the book you're interested in on the store, and pass the entire URL to the script. e.g.

Code:

kobocompare https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/alliance-rising-1

and wait a little bit.

I've hardcoded a set of currency conversions to GBP, which obviously could be improved by someone. Equally obviously it could check each store in parallel instead of one at a time. Patches welcome, as they say.

Cootey · 12-01-2023, 07:20 PM

That seems handy, but don’t you require a separate account for each Kobo store? I have one for Japan and another for the US and their accounts and libraries are separate. I’ve held off creating a Canadian account for that reason, though if I buy it cheap from Canada (they have more sales, the bums! Haha), I could always strip the DRM and sideload it into my US Kobo.

I’m curious how you utilize this script.

Aleron Ives · 12-01-2023, 10:49 PM

You can "travel" on the Kobo store by changing your country and using PayPal so you don't have to enter a billing address.

chrisridd · 12-02-2023, 05:00 AM

Kobo's Japan store might be different, but so far I've successfully bought books from India, Switzerland, Spain, Turkey, Norway all by:

Removing my payment details from my account
Setting my "billing country" to the desired country
Going to the relevant store
Buying with PayPal, or credits on my account via a gift card

The Kobo apps are all able to download the purchased books.

Or in other words from experience Kobo's DRM just locks you to an account (an email address) and not a billing address/country/store.

JSWolf · 12-02-2023, 05:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrisridd

Kobo's Japan store might be different, but so far I've successfully bought books from India, Switzerland, Spain, Turkey, Norway all by:

Removing my payment details from my account
Setting my "billing country" to the desired country
Going to the relevant store
Buying with PayPal, or credits on my account via a gift card

The Kobo apps are all able to download the purchased books.

Or in other words from experience Kobo's DRM just locks you to an account (an email address) and not a billing address/country/store.

IMHO, it's best to get your eBooks as ePub which you can remove the DRM (if there is DRM), read as ePub, or convert to KePub to read.

JSWolf · 12-02-2023, 05:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrisridd

I wrote a little perl script to help me find which Kobo "country" store gives the cheapest prices for a book. It might be helpful to others.

GitHub gist

To use it, find the book you're interested in on the store, and pass the entire URL to the script. e.g.

Code:

kobocompare https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/alliance-rising-1

and wait a little bit.

I've hardcoded a set of currency conversions to GBP, which obviously could be improved by someone. Equally obviously it could check each store in parallel instead of one at a time. Patches welcome, as they say.

Could you please convert this to Python to run in calibre?

chrisridd · 12-02-2023, 10:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Could you please convert this to Python to run in calibre?

I'm not a Python programmer so unfortunately not. It might be a nice project for someone, maybe you could request it in the Calibre forum section?

chrisridd · 07-02-2024, 12:02 PM

Sadly this script no longer works due to changes on kobo.com. The website now seems to return a page full of Javascript that you have to execute to get the "real" web page.

Maybe it is possible to rewrite it as a Javascript "bookmarklet" for your web browser? Help from Javascripting gurus is welcomed!

sydmalicious · Today, 05:08 PM

I may be able to do this. It might be a little while as I am pretty busy, but looking at this Perl script it shouldn't be too hard- both Python and Perl are scripting languages and I work with Python a lot at my job.

chrisridd · Today, 05:18 PM

I’d be interested in seeing what you come up with.

The pages I seem to download now are from Cloudflare and just contain lots of JavaScript which needs to be executed. Some of that seems to be to compute complex json requests to other URLs which then give some actual HTML.

Hence running it inside an actual browser, or maybe node.js (?) might be needed.

sydmalicious · Today, 05:24 PM

Yeah. If you still want to use JavaScript, you could use something like Puppeteer which is a headless Chromium web scraper, much like Selenium and Beautiful Soup for Python. In fact using Puppeteer if you're wanting to keep it JavaScript would probably save you some time and headaches.

I wrote a broken script for Puppeteer which is in this GitHub gist, just to give you a feel for how it works: https://gist.github.com/twhite96/38b...05de2990dcbb9c

I am not sure how to share the automation with the community though. Maybe the creator of Calibre has some ideas? I think I have his name right but don't want to misspell it in this comment.

The docs are here: https://pptr.dev/

sydmalicious · Today, 05:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrisridd

I’d be interested in seeing what you come up with.

The pages I seem to download now are from Cloudflare and just contain lots of JavaScript which needs to be executed. Some of that seems to be to compute complex json requests to other URLs which then give some actual HTML.

Hence running it inside an actual browser, or maybe node.js (?) might be needed.

Hmmmm. Let me see if I can't see what I can grab with a couple cURL commands or nmap. This sounds like they're behind a WAF which will make it difficult to actually grab that data without some finagling which would be a bad idea. I'll try to see what actually gets returned from the cURL command.

sydmalicious · Today, 05:33 PM

I ran the cURL command cURL -I -L <kobo url> and the response is a 403 HTTP code which means it is forbidden. The headers indicate to me that, like I wrote in the previous reply, they are behind Cloudflare's WAF and the only way to get the data would be behind a proxy, if that. I don't think this can be done easily.

11-29-2023, 01:36 PM	#1
chrisridd Guru Posts: 956 Karma: 2209358 Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: London, UK Device: Kobo Aura, Kobo Aura ONE, PocketBook InkPad Color 3	Kobo store price comparisons I wrote a little perl script to help me find which Kobo "country" store gives the cheapest prices for a book. It might be helpful to others. GitHub gist To use it, find the book you're interested in on the store, and pass the entire URL to the script. e.g. Code: kobocompare https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/alliance-rising-1 and wait a little bit. I've hardcoded a set of currency conversions to GBP, which obviously could be improved by someone. Equally obviously it could check each store in parallel instead of one at a time. Patches welcome, as they say.

12-02-2023, 05:00 AM	#4
chrisridd Guru Posts: 956 Karma: 2209358 Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: London, UK Device: Kobo Aura, Kobo Aura ONE, PocketBook InkPad Color 3	Kobo's Japan store might be different, but so far I've successfully bought books from India, Switzerland, Spain, Turkey, Norway all by: Removing my payment details from my account Setting my "billing country" to the desired country Going to the relevant store Buying with PayPal, or credits on my account via a gift card The Kobo apps are all able to download the purchased books. Or in other words from experience Kobo's DRM just locks you to an account (an email address) and not a billing address/country/store. Last edited by chrisridd; 12-02-2023 at 05:01 AM. Reason: formatting

Today, 05:24 PM	#11
sydmalicious Cantankerous Contrarian Posts: 127 Karma: 506950 Join Date: Mar 2014 Location: ::1 Device: iPad Pro 12.9", iPhone 13 Pro, Kobo Sage 32gb, Kindle Paperwhite	Yeah. If you still want to use JavaScript, you could use something like Puppeteer which is a headless Chromium web scraper, much like Selenium and Beautiful Soup for Python. In fact using Puppeteer if you're wanting to keep it JavaScript would probably save you some time and headaches. I wrote a broken script for Puppeteer which is in this GitHub gist, just to give you a feel for how it works: https://gist.github.com/twhite96/38b...05de2990dcbb9c I am not sure how to share the automation with the community though. Maybe the creator of Calibre has some ideas? I think I have his name right but don't want to misspell it in this comment. The docs are here: https://pptr.dev/ Last edited by sydmalicious; Today at 05:25 PM. Reason: Context for links

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
Kobo Clara HD and Libra 2 Comparisons and Questions	Benjamelon	Which one should I buy?	8	12-28-2021 07:33 PM
PRS-T1 Price Reduction at Sony Store to $129	advocate2	Sony Reader	60	12-06-2011 08:45 AM
Kobo Store Price Increases	wildstar	Kobo Reader	17	12-14-2010 03:08 AM
Ebook price comparisons	spinoza	News	47	09-13-2009 12:33 PM
Sony eBook Store Price Drop?	scarter	News	9	08-23-2009 09:18 PM

12-01-2023, 07:20 PM	#2
Cootey Absentminded Reader Posts: 1,232 Karma: 6467285 Join Date: Apr 2017 Device: Kobo Mini, Clara HD, Elipsa; Kindle Paperwhite 3 & 4; iOS eReader apps	That seems handy, but don’t you require a separate account for each Kobo store? I have one for Japan and another for the US and their accounts and libraries are separate. I’ve held off creating a Canadian account for that reason, though if I buy it cheap from Canada (they have more sales, the bums! Haha), I could always strip the DRM and sideload it into my US Kobo. I’m curious how you utilize this script.

12-01-2023, 10:49 PM	#3
Aleron Ives Wizard Posts: 1,228 Karma: 15499948 Join Date: Sep 2022 Device: Kobo Libra 2	You can "travel" on the Kobo store by changing your country and using PayPal so you don't have to enter a billing address.

07-02-2024, 12:02 PM	#8
chrisridd Guru Posts: 956 Karma: 2209358 Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: London, UK Device: Kobo Aura, Kobo Aura ONE, PocketBook InkPad Color 3	Sadly this script no longer works due to changes on kobo.com. The website now seems to return a page full of Javascript that you have to execute to get the "real" web page. Maybe it is possible to rewrite it as a Javascript "bookmarklet" for your web browser? Help from Javascripting gurus is welcomed!

Today, 05:08 PM	#9
sydmalicious Cantankerous Contrarian Posts: 127 Karma: 506950 Join Date: Mar 2014 Location: ::1 Device: iPad Pro 12.9", iPhone 13 Pro, Kobo Sage 32gb, Kindle Paperwhite	I may be able to do this. It might be a little while as I am pretty busy, but looking at this Perl script it shouldn't be too hard- both Python and Perl are scripting languages and I work with Python a lot at my job.

Today, 05:18 PM	#10
chrisridd Guru Posts: 956 Karma: 2209358 Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: London, UK Device: Kobo Aura, Kobo Aura ONE, PocketBook InkPad Color 3	I’d be interested in seeing what you come up with. The pages I seem to download now are from Cloudflare and just contain lots of JavaScript which needs to be executed. Some of that seems to be to compute complex json requests to other URLs which then give some actual HTML. Hence running it inside an actual browser, or maybe node.js (?) might be needed.

Today, 05:33 PM	#13
sydmalicious Cantankerous Contrarian Posts: 127 Karma: 506950 Join Date: Mar 2014 Location: ::1 Device: iPad Pro 12.9", iPhone 13 Pro, Kobo Sage 32gb, Kindle Paperwhite	I ran the cURL command cURL -I -L <kobo url> and the response is a 403 HTTP code which means it is forbidden. The headers indicate to me that, like I wrote in the previous reply, they are behind Cloudflare's WAF and the only way to get the data would be behind a proxy, if that. I don't think this can be done easily.

Advert

Advert