Who is Kobo in 18 Paragraphs

18-ish Things About Kobo

1. Kobo makes ereaders and sells ebooks, audiobooks, Kobo Plus unlimited reading subscription, Kobo Originals, and runs the indie-pub super-service Kobo Writing Life. Our ereaders are amazing and even our copies of ACOTAR are somehow better than those found in other places because our pixels are cuter.

2. We should not be confused with Berryz Kobo, the Japanese girl-group who are now on hiatus so we don't have to compete with them for search traffic. Kobo is also Trinidadian slang for a vulture and the smallest unit of Nigerian currency. This makes for strange Threads searches, because it can be confusing when someone says "The new google pixel phone is not worth a kobo" they could be right in two totally different ways. (Kobo sales in Trini 🇹🇹 are always going to be tough. That's on us.)

3. We started in 2009 in Toronto, Canada. That explains the niceness. Toronto is still HQ.

4. We are the second-largest maker of ereaders in the world, after a company in Seattle. We called to see if they wanted to hang out, but no luck so far. 🤷‍♂️

5. The Rakuten part confuses some people. We were acquired by Rakuten, the amazing Japanese ecommerce company, in 2012, when we could see that we needed deeper pockets to make ourselves the best ebook company we could be. They have been fantastic and are one of the reasons we are now in 30-ish countries, why our sales are now evenly spread across Asia, the Americas, and Europe, and why our karaoke game is 🔥. Later, eBates changed their name to Rakuten in the US & Canada, but we had Rakuten on our name first! 🥇 We don't give cash back on ebooks sadly. But we sometimes do sweet cashback ereader deals! 💰

6. We do ereaders better. You should check them out. We pioneered bigger screens, premium ereaders, waterproofing, variable temp front lights, styluses that write across ebooks, affordable colour, sustainable manufacturing, and other good things. And they just look gorgeous, which is important if you're trying to do the "Come hither and ask me what I'm reading" literary move.

7. We frickin' love libraries. Which may be a weird thing for someone selling books to say, but we would rather have you reading than, say, committing copyright crimes, so we integrated Libby and OverDrive so you can borrow right on the ereader, which will hopefully keep you from pirating a book or stealing a car or something.

8. We try to keep our ereaders open so you can bring books from other places. Lots of side loading and file formats. There is a Linux kernel way down under there, for that wild-eyed hacker who turns their Kobo into a bicycle touring map display or drone controller. 😘

9. Author-and-publisher friendly. We don't shake authors down for exclusivity. Our Kobo Plus payout models are fair. Publishers do not experience PTSD after we have a meeting. Hangovers? Maaayybee...

10. We like bookstores and partner with them whenever we can. Outside of the US, we partner with the 1st or 2nd biggest bookstore in the country and help each other introduce their customers to ebooks. It works great, keeps bookstores healthy, & they do amazing in-store displays.

11. We haven't been big in the US and that's kinda by choice (although that seems to be changing 🥰 📈) When we started, we knew that Amazon, Apple, Google and B&N were all going to fight like cats in a bag for the US market. While they were doing that, we went everywhere else that ebooks were starting to pop, which is why Kobo is better-known in places like France, Netherlands, Taiwan or Australia than in the US. Publishers live in really nice cities around the world, so the travel is 👍 But because we're just across the border, we can speak American. Think of us as the ereader equivalent of your Canadian girlfriend you met at camp. (But just to remind you, we named our new ereaders Kobo Clara Colour and Libra Colour. That "u" has a lot of 🇨🇦 in it.)

12. Yes, we did make a perfume that smells like old books. It's called Kobo Papier and you have to be careful because it's intoxicating to librarians of all ages and genders.

13. Yes, we did throw an underground party in NYC that featured, among other entertainments, a free tattoo artist. Years later, I had someone roll up a sleeve, point to a tattoo and say "Best party ever." That, my friends, was a 10/10 day.

14. We are permanently banned from the oldest bar in Frankfurt.

15. There is a dome next to the Piazza Duomo in Milano where if you walk under it, you can hear an audiobook from Kobo being read to you.

16. All of our meeting rooms are named after 🇨🇦 authors.

17. Kobo is an anagram for Koob, the German pet name for Jacobus/Jacob. Or maybe it's something related to reading. I don't remember.

18. At the last Kobo summer party, which took place on a boat in the middle of Lake Ontario, there were three party decks: Regular Party, Introvert Party (with board games and cards), and Extra-Introvert Party (no speaking, comfy chairs, phones).

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