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Kobo now selling ebooks in 5 languages

Kobo has quietly jumped the gun and started offering ebooks in multiple languages. There’s been no official announcement, but one clever MR member clued me in.

Kobo announced a few months back that they were working on local ebookstores for Europe, it looks like I found the early pre-launch testing. What’s even more interesting is that apparently the prices are being converted to Euros for a German MR member.

I’ve already found listings for Spanish, German, French, Italian, and Dutch. The Dutch ebooks appear to only be free ones from the Internet Archive, while the other languages have paid ebooks. I’d give you numbers, but the search listings don’t quite match with what my Kobo contact said they have.

Yes,  I have checked with Kobo and they are doing some early tests with the new selection and the new localized ebookstores. BTW, I’d say that we now know why Telefonica were in such a hurry to announce their ereader this week. They knew that Kobo were almost ready to launch.

This might not seem like a big deal, but it is. Kobo didn’t exist 18 months ago and they’re about to beat Amazon into several European markets.

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Chris June 28, 2011 um 2:55 pm

I agree that this is a big deal, but it’s not yet "complete" until they launch country-specific storefronts. These kinds of things matter in an increasingly crowded market. After all, buying a specific e-reader also ties you (to some extent) to a given bookstore — I bet you many would pay an extra $15 for their reader to have a "local" bookstore.


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