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Kobo to Launch New Book Reviews Section

Whether kobo itunes ios logothey come from Goodreads, iDreamBooks, or Amazon, book reviews make the ebookstore. For the longest time now Kobo has lacked book reviews, but in the not too distant future that is going to change.

A few days ago Kobo announced on the Kobo Writing Life blog that they are growing their own review section:

In the near future, Kobo will begin featuring book reviews! Customers will be able to write reviews and choose star ratings for your titles and post them on the book page. We want to give KWL authors the opportunity to begin collecting reviews for their titles before the feature goes live!

The new review section is being developed in partnership with Evolcalize, and just about anyone can post a review. All that is required is a Facebook account; you don’t even have to log in with your Kobo account (in fact, you cannot).

 

kobo review system

If you would like to post a review, click this link, log in with your Facebook account, and search by  either title or author. Your review won’t be immediately posted to the Kobo website, but it will be added to the site in the near future (once this feature officially launches).

As you might recall, Kobo used to rely on Goodreads as a source of reviews, but they broke ties in July 2013. This was about 4 months after Goodreads was acquired by Amazon, raising questions as to whose idea it was to break up.

Frankly, I was a little surprised that it took Kobo this long to organize a replacement, especially considering that there already was a readily available alternative. iDreamBooks, which bills it itself as the Rotten Tomatoes of book reviews, launched in 2012. This review aggregator last crossed my desk in April 2013 when it announced a deal with Sony to supply reviews to the Reader Store.

It’s a shame Kobo couldn’t work out a similar deal.

Thanks, Stephen!

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Comments


Fbone May 20, 2014 um 5:00 pm

Facebook account required? I guess I won’t be posting any reviews on Kobo.

Sally May 21, 2014 um 8:50 am

I won’t log in with a Facebook account either. This is a bad move on Kobo’s part.

Nate Hoffelder May 21, 2014 um 8:56 am

I agree that Evocalize should offer another option. it wouldn’t hurt them to also offer Google or twitter logins.


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roman February 25, 2015 um 3:36 am

Kobo is one of the worst books store I had buy from.

I got not the book which I had order (ebook). Hovpwever, I have send them help message and it passed 24hr and still they not return to me!!!

Moreover, I tried call them, but they do not answer to call unless it from few hours a day (sorry but not all people live in US! And here the time different!!!!!!)

Never have such bad deal with "so called" big company.

Really with such service I do not recommend to buy from them.


Reena March 13, 2015 um 1:44 pm

You don’t need a facebook account to post reviews. You can log in with your Kobo account email.


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