Kobo Becoming a Player for Self-Published Ebook Authors

A lot of authors, self-published and otherwise, focus on Amazon when it comes to book sales and promotions. How do I sell more ebooks at Amazon? How do I increase my sales ranking? How do I get my book to appear in their recommendations and also-boughts?

Given how many customers shop at Amazon and how much money some independent authors are making there (aside from the rockstar best-sellers, even a lot of mid-list types such as myself are earning a living from that income), this isn’t surprising, but Amazon isn’t the only store out there selling ebooks. Barnes & Noble has long been the Number 2 earner for me, with iTunes coming in at three and Smashwords itself as four. Canada-based Kobo wasn’t on my radar at all in 2011 (my earnings were fairly negligible there), and it wasn’t until Mark Lefebvre, Director of Self Publishing and Author Relations at Kobo, sent me a note in early 2012 (as a result of my woefully neglected self-publishing podcast) that I started following them more closely.

And Kobo has been quite busy this year! In addition to launching a self-publishing platform in June, they’ve been extending their reach around the globe, making deals and going into many countries where Amazon isn’t yet a player. For more details, I’ll refer you to a Kobo-centric interview that Joanna Penn (from the Creative Penn) did with Mark last month.

So, what does that matter to you and me? Well, naturally, we have an opportunity to sell more ebooks, especially in different countries. As some of you know, I never enrolled in Amazon’s KDP Select because of the exclusivity requirement. Back in my blogging days, I saw a lot of people making a living with Google’s “Adsense” advertising program (i.e. they got paid for ad clicks on their sites), and every now and then you’d hear about someone getting kicked out of the program without recourse. Suddenly their entire income was gone, and they had to scramble to find other ways to monetize their sites. Those who’d been diversifying from the start slept a lot more peacefully at night, knowing that the disappearance of one income stream wouldn’t break them. Thus, I’m tickled to see other ebook sellers stepping forward to collect a share of the pie, something that gives us authors more of a chance to diversify our income streams.

So, how much am I making with Kobo, anyway?

Kobo SalesAs I said earlier, my Kobo earnings weren’t worth tracking last year. I lumped them into the Smashwords collective, which wasn’t that significant either. (Apple iTunes sales fell into the same category in 2011.) But in this last year, both iTunes and Kobo sales have increased for me. Part of that is because I have more ebooks in both stores, and a couple of freebies to boot, but part is also due to these e-tailers working hard to get into more countries and extend their reach. They’re also making their stores more functional and appealing for shoppers (for the longest time, searching for my name at Kobo turned up a perplexing list of erotic books and none of my own work).

This last July, I made about $100 through Kobo’s new “Writing Life” self-publishing platform (with two books: Conspiracy and my Emperor’s Edge three-book omnibus) and that’s gradually increased over the months, especially since I added another full-length novel in September. I’d guess my July earnings were about $200 total when one factors in the books that sell at Kobo via the Smashwords distribution network (This includes most of my titles. I didn’t yank them from SW distribution when the Kobo self-pub platform came online because I didn’t want the books to start over with no reviews there, but I may reconsider this now that sales are increasing —  you earn more going direct and sales reports are updated daily).

In November, my Kobo “Writing Life” earnings hit $450, and again that’s just for the ebooks I published directly (four titles total now). Smashwords hasn’t posted a Kobo-sales update since October 31st, so I have no idea how my other books have been doing there in the last couple of months. I’ll be very curious to see how November and December shape up, as my Writing-Life earnings have definitely been on the upswing, and, in this case, it doesn’t have anything to do with new releases for me. I haven’t put anything new out since a short story in October.

As of this morning, December 21st, I have over $500 in estimated earnings sitting in my Kobo account for this month, so I’m guessing December will finish in the $600-$700 range. If my Smashwords-Kobo titles are selling even half as well, I could break $1,000 at the Canadian store. This would mean that in the last year my Kobo earnings have gone from not-worth-tracking to vying for the #2 spot with Barnes & Noble.

If Kobo ends up surpassing B&N (my December earnings there are a little over $900 for the month so far — at B&N I have everything except my free ebooks and one collection of short stories published directly through PubIt), it’d be fairly significant to me. B&N has been such a solid #2 for me from the beginning, that this seems like a change worth reporting. It’s true that my sales from all of these ebook stores combined have yet to come near my Amazon earnings, but I’m excited to see these other book sellers becoming viable options for authors looking to increase (and diversify) their income.

How do you sell more books at Kobo?

I’m going to confess that, outside of having free Book 1s in the store (the same as I have at Amazon, iTunes, Smashwords, and B&N), I haven’t done much to promote my Kobo books. I’m just now getting my Kobo book links up on my site (before, there was a two-month delay for ebooks to go from uploaded at Smashwords to being live in the Kobo store, so I’d have long since moved on to new projects and new announcements by the time I could find the links. With the Writing Life platform, though, books usually go live within a couple of days, so… make sure to add buy-links to Kobo books from your author site.)

Also, thanks to Mark Lefebvre, a sample of my work was included in the free Kobo Writing Life Spring 2012 Collection. I had one person tell me he went on to grab my entire Emperor’s Edge series after encountering my work there (you have to figure that for one person who emails you there are lots of others who had a similar experience but didn’t email). I believe that came about because Mark found me through my podcast. I see authors debate the pros and cons of blogging all the time, and lots of folks say it doesn’t result in many direct book sales. I’d agree with that, but there can be a lot of intangible benefits of being out there where people in the industry can find you. If you’re trying to help people with your posts, you may just find that others want to help you as well, sometimes in ways you’d couldn’t have imagined.

For the future, I’m keeping an eye out to see if any advertising options come up in regard to Kobo, but in the meantime I think your best bets are to include those Kobo links in any of your promotional materials and to consider uploading a free ebook (especially a Book 1) to the store as a way to let people try your characters and your world at no charge. You might also check out that interview I linked to above, as Mark had a few words at the end about book descriptions and searches and such that can help authors looking to be found at Kobo.

I’d love to hear about other people’s experiences this year at Kobo, so please leave a comment if you’d like to chime in. Thank you!

 

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31 Responses to Kobo Becoming a Player for Self-Published Ebook Authors

  1. Mid says:

    Kobo has been a horrific experience for me — as well as a number of other writers on a private writing forum I’m on. Over the past few months, we have:

    – Received other people’s sales reports, which includes any and all pen names they have. This has happened not once, not twice, but three times to various people over the course of a few months. Privacy violation, much?

    – Kobo tried sending royalty payments to our PEN NAMES rather than the real names that we placed into our payment info page.

    – A number of people have NOT been paid since July/August, despite selling way above the $100 cut-off (some have been earning $500-$1,000+)

    • Mid says:

      (sorry, hit the submit button before I was done)

      ….that $500-$1,000+ is per month, by the way, not in total.

      – Despite numerous emails, there have been no progress on people’s payments. They just keep saying that our bank information is wrong, even though we use the exact same info for every other distributor.

      – Just now, one of our members have had their royalty payment taken back out of his account.

      So for us, Kobo is a screwed up service and we are amazed that all these issues have been kept quiet for so long. Some of us are getting ready to blow the lid off this.

      • I’ve seen similar reports here and there. I think Kobo means well but got overwhelmed when Writing Life went live. That’s my guess. Hopefully they will get it all sorted.

        I might would have better sales there if they had managed to change my price in time for my promotional efforts instead of days late.

    • Lindsay says:

      Sorry to hear about your troubles there, Mid! I agree with David and think Kobo got a little overwhelmed with how many authors jumped to sign up for their platform. Maybe they should have kept it in beta testing for the first 6 months.

      I’d guess that some of the confusion with payments is due to them paying each author in her/his own currency (something nobody else is doing right now). I know I didn’t get paid the first month because I didn’t know where to put the routing number on their direct-deposit sign-up form. They had the Canadian term (Swift or something like that). I think they’ve since changed the description of the field to include the various terms for routing number.

  2. My KOBO sales have steadily increased each month since The Writing Life module came out. Granted, I’m still selling pretty paltry numbers in comparison to yours, but KOBO is definitely the number 2 platform for me.

    I wish there were ways to better advertise for the site, but they seem few and far between. The only thing I have now is a free prequel short story to my main series. Unfortunately, Kobo doesn’t track free downloads like Amazon does.

  3. This is interesting information. We didn’t know that Kobo was such a strong player. We let Smashwords distribute to Kobo for us, but it sounds like now is a good time to change that.

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  5. Hi Lindsay. Congratulations, you are only the second author I know who has made actual sales at Kobo. I attribute this fact to you being a well-known and good author rather than anything Kobo has done for you.

    Being able to upload an actual EPUB is nice, as is a marketing strategy to promote eBooks in emerging markets. But the search algorithms to find books on the Kobo platform are very unsophisticated compared to Amazon. Also, I’m not sure why Kobo got into the device biz,because it’s a very competitive market (Apple, Amazon, Google, and now Microsoft), and they may have been better off just selling eBooks with an app that works on Android/iOS. But I’m just armchair quarterbackin’ and I don’t fault them. I don’t think I could compete with the monoculture of Amazon either.

    KDP is so dominant, especially with independent publishing, that it’s difficult to give other platforms ample consideration. This is not a good thing for reasons you hvae explained, but it’s the way it is at the moment…

    • Kobo devices are available for sale in some markets where Kindles and Nooks are not.

    • Lindsay says:

      Hey Paul, thanks for commenting. I’m coming across more and more folks who are selling books at Kobo, so I know it’s not just me. 😀

      I don’t think I’m particularly well-known in the grand scheme of things or that many people are specifically searching for me at bookstores, but I do think having more books out (in all the bookstores) helps more people stumble across your work. And of course a free ebook or two always seems to help. And writing series in a genre full of series-loving readers. 😉

      I don’t follow the device wars closely, but have you found Kindles and Nooks much in Thailand? I understand Kobo is owned by an Asian company so I’d expect they’d be big over there. I hear that the Kobo device is *the* reader in Canada, and I get quite a few Aussie and European Kobo sales too. Oddly, Amazon doesn’t even have an Australia storefront right now. Kobo seems to be working hard to get its device into local stores in a lot of the global markets.

      We shall see how it all rolls out! 🙂

      • It’s definitely good to diversify and hopefully a credible challenge to Amazon from somewhere will emerge.

        Kobo was bought by Rakuten in Japan (sort of like Asia’s Amazon). Kobo does alright in South Korea, but their big launch in Japan in July was apparently a disaster. Android devices from a wide range of vendors are proliferating quickly in Asia. You’re considered a bum if you don’t have a smartphone in Thailand. That’s why I think they could do better in Asia if they just focused on selling the eBooks rather than the devices. Too much competition for gadgets and people are reading more on tablets and less on eReaders…just my thoughts.

    • Sawyer Grey says:

      Well, make it three then. My sales experience with Kobo has been similar to Lindsay’s. After stopping the distribution through Smashwords and going direct through WritingLife, my sales have increased every month to the point where they’re now neck and neck with B&N for the #2 spot.

      That isn’t to say that their search function isn’t horribly broken. I have absolutely *no* idea how anyone manages to find my stuff – but somehow they do.

  6. JHarper says:

    Lindsay, my experience is from the other side, that of the customer. I have a kobo and upload from their site and others (as kobo uses epub, an open format). I have purchased your works through kobo and indeed heard about you through them. Sometime, and if memory serves it was shortly after you listed with them, I received a promo email from them, pushing their new authors, of which you were one. I took a flier on The Emperor’s Edge because they sent me a promo coupon to use on one of the new authors. I was hooked.
    BTW for insight into at least one of your readers, I was hooked by the adventure/caper/steampunk side, and have come to realize that the romance is actually a feature, not a bug. Sorry, I’m an old guy and it takes me a little longer to catch on.
    All the best
    JH

    • Lindsay says:

      Hey JH,

      Thanks for stopping in and letting me know how you found my work! I’m glad you checked out EE and are having fun with the stories.

      “the romance is actually a feature, not a bug.”

      Haha, I know guys aren’t always as big on that stuff, but I think it comes with the territory when you pick something up with a female main character (or maybe it’s those pesky female authors who are the troublemakers). *g*

  7. AdrijusG says:

    Nice story, congrats on growing sales. Good to see other platforms growing to offset Amazon.

    That said, I wouldn’t be high on Kobo for the future. Why? Because of iPad/Google Nexus 7 and other tablets.

    I will not buy an ereader, I will buy a tablet only. Out of ereaders only Kindle Fire has the ability to compete against iPad (because of cheaper price). I don’t want 2 devices so iPad or iPad Mini will get my money. Therefore, I don’t think Kobo will grow enough and keep selling well in next two years. I’m superhigh on iBookstore because of exploding sales of iPad Mini (the amount of people buying tablets for Christmas is incredible in stores in Ireland).. I think it will be between Amazon and Apple.

    Google could make a play in this too with their Android devices but they would need to focus on it much more and could then become a serious 3rd player.

    I wish best to Kobo as it is good option for indies, but I don’t think they will succeed (through no fault of their own probably).

    • Lindsay says:

      Thanks for weighing in, Adrijus! It’ll be interesting to watch and see how things play out. I don’t think the devices themselves are big earners for any of these guys; they’re just empty boxes that need to be filled with content, and that’s where the money comes in. I actually own an iPad and use the Kindle app and shop at Amazon, because I’ve never found the Apple store that friendly for browsing for books. I’m sure all of the store interfaces will become more sophisticated and user-friendly as time goes on though. We’ll see!

      • AdrijusG says:

        Cheers Lindsay! Cool to read opinions and good posts, so great I could join the discussion.

        It’s interesting that Apple sucks at design at something (!! Steve Jobs would be mad) but they should catch up. Or even if you have to keep using Kindle App you still haven’t bought an ereader device so that is why I don’t put my money on the Kobo/Nook etc. Maybe they will stay as niche tools, not die but not become a serious source of income for writers to live off of.

        BTW, I use Kindle App too on my PC. It is very convenient on Amazon to get books there so Big A has an advantage for sure.

        • The iBooks app is hands down the best reading app, in my opinion. The problem is the iBookstore. While it’s very clean and attractive, much better looking than Amazon, it doesn’t help you find new authors, doesn’t have a wish list, doesn’t allow gifting, etc. Not a great buying experience.

  8. Patty Jansen says:

    I, too, have broken the $100 payout limit every month since I uploaded my books there in August. Kobo is my #1 sales platform by a long margin.

    I think it helps not being a US author, because Kobo has a much bigger international presence and is more friendly to people outside the US, both as buyers and sellers.

    I’ve had no problems with payments. Kobo accepted my bank account and Australian tax file number, and that is way more than can be said about any competitors, where I find myself traipsing to the bank with antiquated cheques, which the bank charges $10 to put in my account, and that is after the retailer has taken 30% out of it for US tax.

    • Lindsay says:

      That’s great that you’re doing well there, Patty!

      Is there any one big store that people usually buy ebooks from in Australia? Or is a big free-for-all with Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, etc.? (I believe my early Aussie readers came via Smashwords.)

      • Patty Jansen says:

        There are several answers to that.

        Where people buy their ebooks in Australia.

        1. They don’t (buy ebooks, that is) at least not in huge numbers.

        2. It is really, really hard to find a Kindle for sale anywhere. I know of only one electronics store chain that carries them. Everyone sells Kobos and Sonys. A lot of people have ipads or other tablets and read on them. A lot of people read on their iphones.

        I believe Amazon wasted a lot of their goodwill with their initial Kindle store release where we could buy almost no interesting books. Oh yes, the titles were listed, but when you went to pay, it would say “not available in Australia”.

        Over this past Christmas, Kobo advertised aggressively on national tv and radio.

        But having said all this, by far the most of my Kobo sales come from Canada. In fact, my dashboard picture looks remarkably similar to the one you posted.

  9. Kobo is already rivaling BN for me, too–actually, unless I do an ad blitz for a Nook book, it does a lot better on Kobo. Of particular interest is the territory chart like Lindsay’s–US will be on par with South Africa or New Zealand for me. You could call this weakness in Kobo’s US market or “Advantage Kobo” in most of the world.

    Although I will point out that most people I know doing well outside Amazon follow “the formula”–writing popular fantasy/paranormal series and making the first book free. It works, although few other tactics do. I honestly have not even checked my bank account (I try to live as far from money as possible) but I have not had any problems–I believe on the first payment they had me fix a routing number.

    Of course, I am in the Select trough so only half my catalog is in the other markets, but since I am doing foreign translations I am counting on Kobo to be a major player. I can already tell their foreign sales are going to be at least in the same ballpark as Amazon’s (except Germany.) As for BN, I can’t see any way it survives past 2014–maybe they can spin off the digital and keep on squeaking by.

    Apple is negligible for me, and even though I have a direct account I tend to use Smashwords just because it’s not worth setting prices for 50 different countries. But I have disdain for the entire Appleverse so that likely colors my investment and return.

    I also agree having multiple revenue streams is the way to be prepared. i got suckered more deeply into Select with the holiday jackpot but will be easing back out of it as the spriong unfolds and 500,000 books compete for $750,000 ($1.5 dollars per book is Amazon’s cost for exclusivity–we really ought to be ashamed of ourselves!)

    BTW not to hijack the thread but I run a communal Kobo wall on Facebook if anyone wants to promote–all you have to do is share the current posted book and message your book. Just read the note at http://www.facebook.com/kobobooks

    Thanks for sharing this, Lindsay.

    • I don’t have nearly your sales, though mine finally started taking off in December. Releasing a sequel does wonders, apparently. B&N was 40% of my sales, and I had a better conversion rate of Book 1 to Book 2 there. Don’t know if it will last, and it may be because the book is YA. I’ve sold maybe 4 books on Kobo so far. Hopefully it will pick up.

  10. Erin Klitzke says:

    I’ll admit that a full Emperor’s Edge series worth of that $100 you earned last year was mine!

    I actually really like the Kobo interface better than the other publishing platform interfaces, but it seems to me more recently that they’re having some functionality issues. However, I’m very impressed with their response time and the amount of analytics they’ve included in the interface for self-published authors. I feel like (unlike other major retailers) they actually give a damn about our business and understand that without writers to write and give them content to sell, they’re not going to make any money in the long run. I only earned $11 in two and a half months, but I also don’t have much of a following yet–and that’s still more than I’ve made at Smashwords in the same amount of time.

    • Lindsay says:

      Thanks for the support on the EE series, Erin!

      The analytics are definitely cool at Kobo. It’s fun to see where in the world your sales come from. Good luck with your own books, and here’s to more sales! 🙂

  11. E.S. Ivy says:

    I was able to get my children’s novel Miri Attwater and the Ocean’s Secret up on Kobo over the holidays even though their website said no new books would go live. It was relatively painless, so I give them kudos for that.

    My book, however, is completely invisible as far as I can tell. They don’t even have a children’s category, just YA. My book is definitely middle grade and not young adult. Furthermore, there are only 4 YA categories, each of which have thousands of books in them.

    I think free is a really good option – I saw Emporer’s Edge on Kobo’s select list of free books just today! But I need to get more books out before I start focusing on that. Getting my book up on Kobo, Smashwords, and B&N (still not up there) took up all my time during the holidays.

  12. Catana says:

    I thought that Kobo’s problems would get sorted out eventually, so I waited. I decided to spring for it a few weeks ago and found, to my dismay, that even US authors must accumulate $100.00 in sales before they can be paid. For me, a niche author, that might mean a year or more. My books have been distributed to Kobo for well over a year, by Smashwords, and I haven’t had a single sale there. Not one. Do I have any reason to go to the trouble of using KWL? I don’t think so.

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  14. As far as Indie Authors and Erotica Authors go, if you’re not already aware.. check out #Kobogeddon (twitter). Looks like Kobo is creating quite a stir in the Indie community (UK especially) by pulling the indie and erotic authors books. Petition here: http://chn.ge/19K9q5T

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