By Donovan Starr
Kobo Writing Life has been around for a
few months now. Like many authors, I’ve chosen to take the plunge with them on
a limited basis. My results? So far, it hasn’t been so great. I’ve sold some
downloads, but I can’t say it’s anything like Amazon.
Don’t get me wrong. They do seem to
embrace authors much more than Amazon does (and certainly more than traditional
publishers). Amazon is good to authors, but they don’t seem to go out of their
way to make sure the writer really feels at home the way Kobo does.
Here’s my hitch: they can’t sell books with the same ability as they
have to treat the author right. I like to be treated properly like anyone else
would, but the bottom line still comes down to how many downloads I get. As I
see it, Kobo needs to change a few things in terms of selling stock.
For one thing, you can’t use keywords in
your meta data nor can customers leave tags the way they can with Kindle or
Nook. That means customers can’t find your titles with ease (though some sites
make it harder to find erotica anyway). Second, there are far fewer features to
properly categorize a book with other likeminded titles. There are some, but
not nearly enough.
I’ll stay the course with them, though.
Luckily their royalty rates are higher (like I said, they treat authors like
gold). Here are some titles I currently have on Kobo.
