Kobo to Launch New Book Reviews Section
Whether they 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).
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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