I got a Kindle Paperwhite as a gift from my work and I fell in love with e-readers. Then I really didn't like how Amazon was locking down getting your own epubs onto the device (it's only gotten worse), so I quickly found Kobos were an excellent device for my use case. I found that buying ePubs online was way more available than I would have thought and now I get to keep my digital books. Just drag and drop them onto the Kobo.
Kobo also has a "sideload mode" that (despite the slightly confusing name) just remove all online features all together.
I gifted my sister my kindle this morning (it was unused for years) after loaded it with azw3 files converted from epub using calibre. The other options is to send epub via email. But I told her to never put it out of airplane mode and get it on WiFi because amazon has deleted my "documents" (that's what they called sideloaded books) before.
I own two kobos, a libra for fiction and an ellipsa for tech books and textbooks. Both have koreader on.
> i read third party epubs on kindle all the time.
No, you do not. Kindle has never and, as far as I am aware, to this day, does not support epubs. The only way to read epubs on your Kindle is to convert them either by Amazon's Send to Kindle service or through software like Calibre.
I love that Kobos can still be set up completely offline. At the setup screen you can mount the device, set a flag in the config file, unmount/reboot, and boom, it's ready for your books.
My Clara BW is my daily driver. As much as I'd like to use an open reader, their rendering and screen quality are still not quite as polished as the corpo options.
This guide is for a kobo that is already set up, but the procedure is mostly the same from step 5 onwards for a new device.
The only step that I think is missing from this guide is that you have to select a language before connecting the Kobo via USB, in my experience. Mass storage mode should work once you have picked a language.
I also did the same on a factory reset, used Libra Color, and that worked well. On that device I had to do some trickery to get the notes feature to work, which I think involved loading up some dictionary files. I can't readily find the guide I followed for that.
Amazon wiping people's e-books they had already bought was probably the straw that broke the camel's back. Yeah, they swore to never do it again but what's that worth?
I've been steering clear from Kindle even though their devices are an attractive buy. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Amazon left the e-reader market in a few years since their Kindles are tainted.
Interesting observation here. I still read a lot, but airplanes have become a place I rarely do. I used to always pick up a book every time I flew and would finish it on the flight home. I would still much rather read a real book on the beach than doomscroll though.
> "We're losing the person who reads one book a year," he says. "And that was the person who bought their one Tom Clancy novel when they went on vacation, because you needed something to read on the plane because there was nothing else to do on the plane. Now that the plane has Wi-Fi, and so does that beach, that person is scrolling, not reading."
Is there a way to get kids books on Kobo? Every time we
fly we carry like 10 pounds of board books to keep my son entertained. It would be awesome to have an ebook reader with his board books and other stuff on it.
Kobo Elipsa (1) is my preferred reader for PDFs/papers in particular. Genuinely good product, software works well enough and presents as USB mass storage, long battery life. Other than perhaps a more responsive, USB-C pen, IDK what else you could improve on.
I bought a kobo (2022 maybe?) pretty much entirely because (at the time anyway) it had the best on-device integration with Overdrive. not sure if kindle, nook, etc still require you to browse and check out books on a secondary device and then sync but I appreciated the kobo getting rid of that step. still using it and still happy.
Is there anything out there comparable to my original Kindle Oasis? Mine has lived in airplane mode its whole life and I’m afraid for when it finally dies
Kobo has the Sage which seems similar at first glance, but unfortunately it also has a stylus and plays audio books. It's closer to a Kindle Scribe or a low-end tablet.
They’re also just more user friendly in general. I have a nearly decade old Kobo that still serves its purpose well and I love how it shows up as a mass storage device when plugged into my computer. No clunky management software (Calibre may be functional, but its UI is godawful) or file conversions required, you just manage plain old epubs in your file browser. That functionality can’t randomly vanish one day, either (unlike e.g. Amazon’s email-to-Kindle service). It’s great.
As a side effect of its openness I’ve bought more books through the Kobo store than I would have otherwise. A perfect counter example is my Oculus Quest 2 which I go out of my way to not buy games from its associated marketplace on; as long as that device is hard-tethered to Facebook and its software, I’m better off as using it as a “dumb” headset with VR purchases going to PC marketplaces like Steam.
Kobo devices ship two different rendering engines: the obsolete, appallingly bad Adobe Reader Mobile SDK (RMSDK), and their own, bespoke, WebKit-based renderer. By default, files with an .epub extension are rendered with RMSDK. Consequently, you'll get all sorts of weird issues. Some of the ones I've encountered: I've had cover images not displaying in the library, misbehaving internal links (footnotes), inability to override typefaces/text size.
Easy fix: rename the file to .kepub.epub[0].
Slightly more involved fix: run the file through Kepubify[1] first. This tool makes further tweaks to the books to enable a few other features, like remaining read time estimation.
I had no idea! I'd switched from Kindle to Boox because Boox runs Android, which is more hackable, but if Kobo supports SSH, I'll have to give it another look!
If my Kindle ever breaks I'm going to look at Kobo. I prefer whatever ecosystem sells me the ebooks that are easiest to de-DRM so I can own what I've paid for. A decade ago, that was Amazon, but they have locked down a lot.
I probably will move to Kobo eventually as well. My current device is the Oasis and I wish I had bought a spare. I was always hoping Amazon would update it with a USB-C port which I would have bought on day 1.
I know it's such a small issue that no politician will ever take it on, but I really wish there would be some legislation around forcing interoperability and ebook transfer rights.
You can buy a Blu Ray disk and it's going to work in your player. Ebooks should be like that too. And I should be able to give away my ebook collection the same way I can my BR collection.
Doubling a really small number is not particularly impressive. The article doesn't have numbers, but I believe that Canadian sales of Kobo still significantly exceed American sales despite the doubling.
I got a Kindle Paperwhite as a gift from my work and I fell in love with e-readers. Then I really didn't like how Amazon was locking down getting your own epubs onto the device (it's only gotten worse), so I quickly found Kobos were an excellent device for my use case. I found that buying ePubs online was way more available than I would have thought and now I get to keep my digital books. Just drag and drop them onto the Kobo.
Kobo also has a "sideload mode" that (despite the slightly confusing name) just remove all online features all together.
> Amazon was locking down getting your own epubs onto the device
Curious about what has changed? I've only ever used the email method and that continues to work.
Same here re email. Though I’m considering switching to kobo anyways cuz Bezos sucks.
what you mean by locking down? your epub is your epub . i read third party epubs on kindle all the time. i am not sure if i am missign somethign here
Amazon is making it harder and harder to copy third party books onto the devices.
by doing what? i do it all that time. did one this morning.
I gifted my sister my kindle this morning (it was unused for years) after loaded it with azw3 files converted from epub using calibre. The other options is to send epub via email. But I told her to never put it out of airplane mode and get it on WiFi because amazon has deleted my "documents" (that's what they called sideloaded books) before.
I own two kobos, a libra for fiction and an ellipsa for tech books and textbooks. Both have koreader on.
> i read third party epubs on kindle all the time.
No, you do not. Kindle has never and, as far as I am aware, to this day, does not support epubs. The only way to read epubs on your Kindle is to convert them either by Amazon's Send to Kindle service or through software like Calibre.
Perhaps we should link to the article: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/content...
I love that Kobos can still be set up completely offline. At the setup screen you can mount the device, set a flag in the config file, unmount/reboot, and boom, it's ready for your books.
My Clara BW is my daily driver. As much as I'd like to use an open reader, their rendering and screen quality are still not quite as polished as the corpo options.
I just bought a Kobo Clara Color after purchasing various Kindles for years.
It requires an online setup (account).
A quick search did not find what your saying. Can you please post a how-to or link one (that I couldn't find)?
https://qtekfun.com/random-stuff/bypass-kobo/
This guide is for a kobo that is already set up, but the procedure is mostly the same from step 5 onwards for a new device.
The only step that I think is missing from this guide is that you have to select a language before connecting the Kobo via USB, in my experience. Mass storage mode should work once you have picked a language.
I also did the same on a factory reset, used Libra Color, and that worked well. On that device I had to do some trickery to get the notes feature to work, which I think involved loading up some dictionary files. I can't readily find the guide I followed for that.
Yep, this is the reason I chose a Kobo.
Amazon wiping people's e-books they had already bought was probably the straw that broke the camel's back. Yeah, they swore to never do it again but what's that worth?
I've been steering clear from Kindle even though their devices are an attractive buy. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Amazon left the e-reader market in a few years since their Kindles are tainted.
The camel is doing just fine. Amazon ereaders have 70+% market share.
Fun fact: I searched for Kobo Clara on Amazon, and the algorithm has labelled it "Amazon's choice". A subtle agreement with you maybe :)
Interesting observation here. I still read a lot, but airplanes have become a place I rarely do. I used to always pick up a book every time I flew and would finish it on the flight home. I would still much rather read a real book on the beach than doomscroll though.
> "We're losing the person who reads one book a year," he says. "And that was the person who bought their one Tom Clancy novel when they went on vacation, because you needed something to read on the plane because there was nothing else to do on the plane. Now that the plane has Wi-Fi, and so does that beach, that person is scrolling, not reading."
I switched to buying books from Kobo this year because removing DRM from books bought at Amazon is getting too difficult and unreliable.
My wife and I both had kindles since they were first a thing and we both switched to Kobo a few years ago. So nice not getting ads.
70% women is about what I see in bookstores, and frequently the main display cases are geared towards genres more popular among women, like romantasy.
Is there a way to get kids books on Kobo? Every time we fly we carry like 10 pounds of board books to keep my son entertained. It would be awesome to have an ebook reader with his board books and other stuff on it.
Aren't those designed fit the page, in other words, to keep it looking the same, it would have to be squished (and unreadable) to fit on the screen?
Kobo Elipsa (1) is my preferred reader for PDFs/papers in particular. Genuinely good product, software works well enough and presents as USB mass storage, long battery life. Other than perhaps a more responsive, USB-C pen, IDK what else you could improve on.
I bought a kobo (2022 maybe?) pretty much entirely because (at the time anyway) it had the best on-device integration with Overdrive. not sure if kindle, nook, etc still require you to browse and check out books on a secondary device and then sync but I appreciated the kobo getting rid of that step. still using it and still happy.
Is there anything out there comparable to my original Kindle Oasis? Mine has lived in airplane mode its whole life and I’m afraid for when it finally dies
I've never found one.
Kobo has the Sage which seems similar at first glance, but unfortunately it also has a stylus and plays audio books. It's closer to a Kindle Scribe or a low-end tablet.
Kobo has daily deals going. Every day I open my wishlist and sort by price lowest to highest, and every few days I buy something.
If you aren't reading comics I wouldn't recommend color e-readers yet. The screens are dimmer and have a noticeable filter over them.
I bought one in July, I chose Kobo because it's hackable and you can ssh in. So far I've had as much fun with that as with reading.
They’re also just more user friendly in general. I have a nearly decade old Kobo that still serves its purpose well and I love how it shows up as a mass storage device when plugged into my computer. No clunky management software (Calibre may be functional, but its UI is godawful) or file conversions required, you just manage plain old epubs in your file browser. That functionality can’t randomly vanish one day, either (unlike e.g. Amazon’s email-to-Kindle service). It’s great.
As a side effect of its openness I’ve bought more books through the Kobo store than I would have otherwise. A perfect counter example is my Oculus Quest 2 which I go out of my way to not buy games from its associated marketplace on; as long as that device is hard-tethered to Facebook and its software, I’m better off as using it as a “dumb” headset with VR purchases going to PC marketplaces like Steam.
> plain old epubs
Kobo devices ship two different rendering engines: the obsolete, appallingly bad Adobe Reader Mobile SDK (RMSDK), and their own, bespoke, WebKit-based renderer. By default, files with an .epub extension are rendered with RMSDK. Consequently, you'll get all sorts of weird issues. Some of the ones I've encountered: I've had cover images not displaying in the library, misbehaving internal links (footnotes), inability to override typefaces/text size.
Easy fix: rename the file to .kepub.epub[0].
Slightly more involved fix: run the file through Kepubify[1] first. This tool makes further tweaks to the books to enable a few other features, like remaining read time estimation.
[0]: https://github.com/kobolabs/epub-spec#sideloading-for-testin...
[1]: https://pgaskin.net/kepubify/
You can't SSH into kindles anymore? I know that used to be a thing.
I had no idea! I'd switched from Kindle to Boox because Boox runs Android, which is more hackable, but if Kobo supports SSH, I'll have to give it another look!
It’s a shame that Boox disregards GPL2 intentionally. Wish we had more hardware makers that weren’t hostile to free software.
[0]https://x.com/puffnfresh/status/1587064729977044994?s=46
It's busybox underneath so you can hack on it but you can't run full apps in the Android sense.
How do you like your Boox device?
If my Kindle ever breaks I'm going to look at Kobo. I prefer whatever ecosystem sells me the ebooks that are easiest to de-DRM so I can own what I've paid for. A decade ago, that was Amazon, but they have locked down a lot.
I probably will move to Kobo eventually as well. My current device is the Oasis and I wish I had bought a spare. I was always hoping Amazon would update it with a USB-C port which I would have bought on day 1.
I know it's such a small issue that no politician will ever take it on, but I really wish there would be some legislation around forcing interoperability and ebook transfer rights.
You can buy a Blu Ray disk and it's going to work in your player. Ebooks should be like that too. And I should be able to give away my ebook collection the same way I can my BR collection.
Kavita, Tailscale, KoReader with OPDS, on the Kobo is basically a perfect system for organizing ebooks, transferring, and reading.
No one reasonable wants to support Bezos and his Melania funding
Doubling a really small number is not particularly impressive. The article doesn't have numbers, but I believe that Canadian sales of Kobo still significantly exceed American sales despite the doubling.