Kobo Inc. is the company that makes the Kobo eReader, and its headquarters is in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
In July 2012 Kobo unveiled Kobo Writing Life, a platform upon which authors can self-publish their work directly via Kobo’s ecosystem, avoiding the middle man. Kobo is one of the retailers that has a huge growing market share in the eBook market. Recently we had a chance to interview Christine Munroe, the U.S. Manager for Kobo Writing Life (KWL), and she explained to us how to sell effectively with Kobo:
What is your role at Kobo?
I’m the U.S. Manager for Kobo Writing Life (KWL), our free self-publishing platform. My role involves working directly with authors, agents, and small publishers to help them upload their titles and support their success on kobo.com. I also promote our partnership with the American Booksellers Association, which allows readers to buy eBooks through Kobo via their local indie bookstore.
What is the biggest mistake you see authors make when uploading their books?
I want to mention three common – and easy to avoid – mistakes that I see often:
- Incorrect genre (and subgenre) categorization – for example, using nonfiction subgenres for a novel.
- Misusing the title and subtitle fields, in particular, adding a description of the book or a list of its subgenres in brackets within either field.
- When setting an eBook’s price, many users let our auto-converter set the Canadian price for them. For example, an eBook priced at USD $2.99 might auto-convert to CAD $3.30, which is not as appealing to a Canadian consumer. Users can easily change this manually in their KWL dashboard. Canada is a big market for Kobo, because our company is based in Toronto, so this seemingly small change can help increase sales on kobo.com.
What is the most popular genre on Kobo?
Romance, followed by Thriller/Mystery, then Fantasy.
What are some examples of books that have a great cover, great meta data and are tagged well?
Kobo Next is one place where we highlight new eBooks we love, and each of these titles (in a variety of categories) feature a great cover, title, and metadata. Some real pros include HM Ward, Bella Andre, Barbara Freethy, and Tina Folsom.
About Christine Munroe:
Christine Munroe is the US Manager for Kobo Writing Life. She works directly with authors, agents, and small publishers to help them successfully self-publish their books to kobo.com. She also builds Kobo’s partnership with the American Booksellers Association by coordinating events at US bookstores that bring together local indie authors and bookstores and help spread the word that you can support your local store by buying books via Kobo. Prior to joining Kobo she was a literary agent and international book scout.
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