Who is Kobo Publishing and should you publish your eBook with them?

As a self-publishing author, you will have seen many places to publish your book, the big hitters like KDP publishing and IngramSpark are the first that come to mind for many, but there are other options, and Kobo is one publishing service that you may not have considered.

So, who are Kobo Publishing?

Kobo (which they took from being an anagram of the word book), is originally a Canadian company, started back in 2009, it was then acquired by Rakuten in 2012 and then purchased the eBook business from the bookstore Waterstones in 2016.

As well as publishing eBooks, they also publish audio books and create eReaders that compete alongside the likes of Amazon’s Kindle and B&N’s Nook tablet.

They have their products carried by the retailer Walmart, which does give their authors access to a lot of customers purchasing a Kobo tablet for reading upon. They also have over six million books within their library and have customers in more than 200 countries around the world, they are bigger than you may have realized.
 
How do you start with Kobo publishing?

First, you will need to set up a free account on their website, via their Kobo Writing Life page, here you can create your own account quite easily. This page then allows users to create, edit and upload their books (eBooks) to Kobo for self-publishing. They do offer services to help authors, such as a conversion tool which should convert your Word document into an ePub file, along with guides to ensure that your eBook is correctly prepared for publishing.

Once you have uploaded your book, it normally takes around 72 hours for it to go live.
 
Does your eBook have to be exclusively with them?

No, Kobo makes it possible for you to publish your book elsewhere, if you look at their website, they encourage authors to do this too. However, you will need to check with other retailers to see if they have any restrictions with certainly programs your book may be enrolled in, KDP’s Select being one.

What is ​Kobo Plus?

Similar to KDP’s Kindle Unlimited, Kobo offers a subscription service to their readers, this you can choose to opt in for with your own book, it’s currently available in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands and Portugal, again, there is no exclusivity with this.
The payments for books read on Kobo plus are based around the amount of time a subscriber has spent reading your book (or listening to the audio version), the more time they read or listen, the more you’ll be paid.

What about payments for the eBooks you sell?

For original eBooks, Kobo pays a 70% royalty to its authors, but the book must be either equal to or greater than a set price of:

$2.99 USD, £1.99 GBP, $2.99 CAD, €1.99 EUR (You can see the full list here)
For original eBooks with a price under this set level, the royalty is 45%
For public domain eBooks, the royalty is 20%

​For audio books, you will get 32% of the list price for subscription purchases and for audio books purchased separately a royalty of 45% off the list price, and like the eBooks, they set a price threshold which your audio book will need to be either the same as or higher:

$2.99 USD, £1.99 GBP, $2.99 CAD, €1.99 EUR (You can see the full list here)
For original eBooks with a price under this set level, the royalty is 35%

What file types do they accept?

Kobo currently accept .doc and .docx, .odt, .ePub and .mobi files for their eBooks (but be no bigger than 100MB), for the eBook cover design the file should be 300ppi in resolution, no bigger than 5MB and 1448 x 1072 pixels in dimensions.
 
Should I publish with them?

This is really down to what your publishing goals are, if you are using other publisher’s programs to promote and sell your book through, then you will need to check with them first to ensure that you won’t invalidate those channels.
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However, if you are not, then Kobo is a great additional channel to add your eBook to, with no set up fees and being able to sell your book via their website and Kobo devices, it’s certainly worth considering for your eBook.