Indie Bookstore Sales of Kobo Ebooks Dwarf Google; Still Small

 DBW - April 5, 2013 | Jeremy Greenfield |

 

The Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Mass. has sold about 80 e-readers, three tablets and few hundred ebooks with Kobo so far.

 

Just six months after forging a partnership with the American Booksellers Association (ABA) to help independent bookstores sell ebooks, Canadian upstart Kobo has shown that it can crush the competition – even when the competition is one of the world’s largest and most admired companies.
In fact, it only took a month.
According to the ABA, Kobo has helped indies sell more ebooks in its first month working with them late last year than Google did in more than two years in a similar partnership.
“Where content is concerned, we swiftly exceeded our Google ebook experience right out of the gate,” said Neil Strandberg, director of member technology for the ABA. “From our point of view, it’s soundly beating the Google ebook program.”
Why? The difference is devices, said Strandberg and booksellers from all over the U.S. Unlike the Google partnership with the ABA and bookstores, which ended in Jan. of this year, the Kobo partnership, which was launched in Oct. of last year, gives stores the opportunity to sell Kobo’s line of e-readers and tablets, which makes it easier to sell ebooks.
At this point, Kobo says that 460 stores have signed up for the program and that it plans to have 1,000 signed up by the end of the year. That’s much more than Google ever had and it’s a vote of confidence in the industry for the strategy: sell the e-reader, sell the ebooks. Confidence in the strategy, however, might not be enough.
While neither Kobo nor the ABA would share specific numbers on total device or ebook sales, candid conversations with bookstore owners, Kobo and the ABA suggest that there might be trouble beneath the veneer of impressive but relative success this new partnership has shown in its early days.
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And here is the Forbes take on "Kobo kicking Google's butt"