Kobo Expands KWL’s Author Services With Editorial, Conversion, Design Services
Kobo announced on Wednesday that it had negotiated deals with digital publishing service companies to offer discounts to authors and publishers who contract through Kobo Writing Life's Author Services.
Initially announced in August 2015, Author Services was launched earlier this year to offer authors and publishers a discount on audiobook production and a (worthless) discount on ISBNs.
And now Kobo is expanding Author Services. According to the press release(PDF), authors and publishers can now secure editorial, cover design, formatting, and other services through the portal. The services are provided by experts at companies like Aptara, Nord Compo, AcePub, and NewGen, rather than Kobo.
Or at least that is what the press release says; the Author Services page disagrees.
I just logged into my KWL account to check which services are available, and when I clicked the "get more info" buttons for each of the offered services, only about half of the response emails explained how I could move forward. The other half indicated that they were under development.
When this service has been set up, we will reach out to our authors with more information.
According to Kobo’s own website, I can’t get an ISBN, audiobook, or editorial services through Kobo Writing Life. And that’s strange because two of the three were supposed to have been set up back in January.
Isn’t it odd that Kobo would send out this email when their site still isn’t up and running?
Is anyone else wondering whether this ill-considered press release for an under-prepared portal might be a response to some other company’s ereader launch today?
image by Matt Hampel
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