# Kobo Writing Life is out of beta!



## erikhanberg (Jul 15, 2011)

Just got the email that the KDP for Kobo is out of beta and open to all writers!


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## Anne Frasier (Oct 22, 2009)

so excited about this!


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## erikhanberg (Jul 15, 2011)

https://writinglife.kobobooks.com/

If you can't find it on their site. (I couldn't).


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

CHOWDERBUCKETS!!!!

I'm locked into Select. Quick, quick, write something ...


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## AmberC (Mar 28, 2012)

SWEET!


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## Catana (Mar 27, 2012)

You beat me to it. I was just about to post that I got the email, but decided to check first. As eager as I am to try  it, I'm glad I'm deep into editing right now. I imagine a lot of people will be reporting back with their experience. I have three novels and two shorts to put up. Whoopee!


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## Will Write for Gruel (Oct 16, 2010)

So any thoughts on what advantages we have going direct with Kobo vs. letting Smashwords distribute there? Are there any marketing tools available if we go direct?


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

I've got one book that can go in on the 27th and another on the 31st, so I guess I'll mosey on over there and check out the interface.

As a Canadian who writes some books set in Vancouver, where most people with ereaders have the Kobo, let's just say I feel like this:   Hi Kobo! How you doin'?


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## Nicole Ciacchella (May 21, 2012)

I got my e-mail too and I'm pretty excited about this.  My exclusivity with The Eye of the Beholder expires on the 28th, so I'm going to be doing some uploading to both B&N and Kobo.  It'll give me a chance to see how things function over there before my exclusivity on Creators expires.  I'm really looking forward to reading about others' experiences in the meantime!


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## Carol (was Dara) (Feb 19, 2011)

dalya said:


> As a Canadian who writes some books set in Vancouver, where most people with ereaders have the Kobo, let's just say I feel like this:  Hi Kobo! How you doin'?


  That's Kobo slyly winking back.

Seriously, is there any truth to the rumor Kobo is going to give books under $2.99 a 40 % royalty or is that just crazy talk? Because if it's true, I'd hope that would give Amazon something to ponder. Personally, Kobo was my 3rd biggest vendor in the days when I used SmashWords, so I'm excited to see where this goes.


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## RM Prioleau (Mar 18, 2011)

What exactly is Kobo Writing Life? I never heard of it. Is it just a Kobo version of Kindle Select?


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## Anne Frasier (Oct 22, 2009)

Dara England said:


> That's Kobo slyly winking back.
> 
> Seriously, is there any truth to the rumor Kobo is going to give books under $2.99 a 40 % royalty or is that just crazy talk? Because if it's true, I'd hope that would give Amazon something to ponder. Personally, Kobo was my 3rd biggest vendor in the days when I used SmashWords, so I'm excited to see where this goes.


i might be wrong because my eyes were crossing reading the fine print, but it looked like 1.99 and up earns 70%. Am I right? Wrong?


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

4.1. Retail Price and Standard Terms. You shall provide Kobo with the Suggested Retail Price (“SRP”) for the eBook, which shall be exclusive of any value-added, goods and service, sales or similar taxes (“Taxes”). Except where Publisher’s Works qualify to participate in the Independent Publisher Program (“IPP”) set out below, Kobo shall pay Publisher 45% of the SRP for each of Publisher’s eBooks sold (“Standard Terms”). Kobo shall, in its sole discretion, set the actual selling price paid by the User (“ASP”) for each Publisher eBook and may also display or add any Taxes to the ASP as separate items or included in the ASP.

4.2 IPP Terms. Kobo shall pay Publisher 70% of the SRP (“IPP Terms”) for the sale for each eBook sold for Publishers who meet the following criteria (collectively the “IPP Criteria”):

        Your SRP for each eBook must adhere to the following pricing rules;
            less than or equal to $12.99USD and greater than or equal to $1.99USD in the US,
            less than or equal to £7.99GBP and greater than or equal to £1.99GBP in the UK,
            less than or equal to $12.99CAD and greater than or equal to $1.99CAD in Canada,
            less than or equal to $ 11.99 AUD and greater than or equal to $1.99 AUD in Australia
            less than or equal to € 12.99 EUD and greater than or equal to €1.99 EUD in the European Union
           less than or equal to $ 12.99 NZD and greater than or equal to $1.99 NZD in New Zealand
           less than or equal to $99.99 HKD and greater than or equal to $ 15.99 HKD in Hong Kong
           at least twenty (20%) percent below the SRP of the physical edition of the book, if one is available.

The SRP for your eBooks provided to Kobo must be less than or equal to the lowest price provided by you to any third party.
Your Works cannot be works in the public domain, being works published before 1923 in the United States, “author’s lifetime + 50 years” in Canada and New Zealand, “author’s lifetime + 70 years” in Australia, the EU, and the United Kingdom.
Your eBooks must be made available to Kobo for sale in every geographic location within which Publisher has intellectual property rights.
eBooks qualify for IPP Terms only for sales to Users in the territories set out in Schedule A (below)
Except for the territory restriction (where your eBooks outside the IPP Territories shall be paid at Standard Terms but your eBooks within the IPP Territories will be paid at IPP Terms if they otherwise qualify), all your eBooks must meet the IPP Criteria at all times in order for Publisher to receive IPP Terms; if any Work does not comply with the IPP Criteria at any point during a sales period, you will be paid for all sales during that period using the Standard Terms.

Kobo may, at its sole discretion, add to the IPP Territories or modify IPP Criteria from time to time in accordance with the terms set out herein. Any changes to IPP Terms or IPP Criteria will apply to all books provided by Publisher under the IPP.


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## Saul Tanpepper (Feb 16, 2012)

Asher MacDonald said:


> So any thoughts on what advantages we have going direct with Kobo vs. letting Smashwords distribute there? Are there any marketing tools available if we go direct?


More control. They'll apparently let you run free promos whenever and as often as you want. No exclusivity. Probably faster upload times than smashy. What you sacrifice in convenience, you more than make up for in speed and control. I'm excited. Now if I can just find the time to do all that formatting and submitting...


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## Carol (was Dara) (Feb 19, 2011)

Anne Frasier said:


> i might be wrong because my eyes were crossing reading the fine print, but it looked like 1.99 and up earns 70%. Am I right? Wrong?


I couldn't tell you because I haven't even gotten to the fine print yet.  I just know I heard someplace the royalty rates for low priced books were going to be better than KDP's.

RM, I believe Writing Life is Kobo's answer to KDP and PubIt (to say nothing of Apple's new platform).

ETA: After reading what Monique posted, it looks like $0.99 books will get 45 % and everything $1.99-$12.99 gets 70 %.


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## jewishwriter (May 13, 2011)

I have a Kobo account, and after receiving their e-mail started to register for the writing life. I stopped midway because of the eight-page Kobo program terms and conditions to read before completion. Taking it home to study. Guess their terms should be weighed against Smashwords before deciding.

for those asking where to look: www.writinglife.kobobooks.com

I am curious whether an ISBN will be needed as is the case with a Smashwords upload.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

I'm just tagging this thread so that I can read it later tonight


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## Catana (Mar 27, 2012)

I read somewhere that Kobo won't require an ISBN. 

There's a FAQ, if you can track it down, but the question about being paid seems to apply only to vendors, and there's a $100.00 minimum to be paid monthly. I hope that doesn't apply to writers. If so, I won't be signing on.


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## ruecole (Jun 13, 2012)

dalya said:


> CHOWDERBUCKETS!!!!
> 
> I'm locked into Select. Quick, quick, write something ...


Bwahahahaa! That was my first response, too! 

I'll leave you more experienced folks to read over the fine print and translate it for those of us not fluent in legalese. 

Rue


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## Romi (Apr 4, 2011)

Asher MacDonald said:


> So any thoughts on what advantages we have going direct with Kobo vs. letting Smashwords distribute there? Are there any marketing tools available if we go direct?


For me the advantage would be that I wouldn't have to wait a month and counting to get my titles uploaded to Kobo if I went direct, as I'm currently having to wait whilst dealing with the Smashwords customer support team...so for me? This is a big YES!


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## Carol (was Dara) (Feb 19, 2011)

Catana said:


> There's a FAQ, if you can track it down, but the question about being paid seems to apply only to vendors, and there's a $100.00 minimum to be paid monthly. I hope that doesn't apply to writers. If so, I won't be signing on.


Not trying to be nosy but do you mind if I ask why not? Amazon and B&N are the only vendors who pay me monthly anyway, so I'm not too particular about whether I get $20 per month or $100 in five months. I'd feel differently if the minimum payout was at $1,000 or something.


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## Cege Smith (Dec 11, 2011)

I can't wait to check this out, but can't be distracted from my WIP by this shiny new ball distraction.   Good news by the time I'm ready I am certain there will be a ton of great advice/experiences being shared. Hooray!


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Regarding the payment threshold - there seems to be some confusion there. The Guide says $100. The FAQ says $25 for electronic payments and $100 for checks.


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## Carol (was Dara) (Feb 19, 2011)

Monique said:


> Regarding the payment threshold - there seems to be some confusion there. The Guide says $100. The FAQ says $25 for electronic payments and $100 for checks.


FWIW, Amazon's requirement is $10 for EFT and $100 for checks.


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## AmberC (Mar 28, 2012)

I tried to sign up but I got an error message. Boo!


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## Carol (was Dara) (Feb 19, 2011)

Sweetapple said:


> I tried to sign up but I got an error message. Boo!


Was it on the 2nd registration page?


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## NRWick (Mar 22, 2011)

So exciting! I've signed up and uploaded 2 books already. Very exciting!


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## J.R. Thomson (Mar 30, 2011)

I'm out of the loop and still don't know what Kobo is.  Is it similar to Smashwords?


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

CabanaBooks.com said:


> I'm out of the loop and still don't know what Kobo is. Is it similar to Smashwords?


http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Kobo


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## AmberC (Mar 28, 2012)

When I go to confirm registration I get an error message.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

They might be overwhelmed.


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## Sarah Woodbury (Jan 30, 2011)

I have been frustrated with SW relationship with Kobo since Kobo updates my books about once a century, including price changes. So, I've delisted all of my books from the Kobo platform via SW (notification to be sent, SW says), and uploaded one book so far at Kobo. SW had sent it, but Kobo hadn't been put on display yet (after weeks of waiting). I'm not sure Kobo is really ready for the big time, but since I wasn't selling much there anyway, it can't hurt to experiment.

By the way, Kobo has the worst search engine going, far worse than B and N. I type in 'Woodbury, Sarah' and get nothing. Only 'Sarah Woodbury' gets a result. Try typing in 'king arthur'. You get 10 books. It would be hilarious if it weren't so sad. http://www.kobobooks.com/search/search.html?q=king+arthur


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

As a heavy Kobo customer, I find their search painful, the way that slamming your fingers in a door is painful. However, their email recommendations to me are always really good.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Their search engine is stunningly bad. It makes you yearn for something as good as B&N's search engine.


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## Catana (Mar 27, 2012)

Dara England said:


> Not trying to be nosy but do you mind if I ask why not? Amazon and B&N are the only vendors who pay me monthly anyway, so I'm not too particular about whether I get $20 per month or $100 in five months. I'd feel differently if the minimum payout was at $1,000 or something.


The money I earn each month from book sales helps the bottom line of my budget. It isn't a whole lot, but waiting several months to be paid isn't an option, especially since I have no idea how good my sales would be there. My sales from Smashwords distributors have been pitiful, with none at all from Kobo, so it's possible I'd have to wait an eternity to be paid. I'm getting a little old for that kind of delay.  But, as I said, it looks as if that's the requirement for vendors. As long as we aren't defined as vendors, I'll probably be okay with their terms.


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## B Sheridan (Dec 5, 2011)

Does anyone who has already signed up and started publishing through Writing Life know if Kobo is like Amazon with pen names (you can publish under multiple pen names from one account without your real name attaching) or like Apple (your real name attaches to whatever you publish unless you set up your pen name as DBA)?


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## Anne Frasier (Oct 22, 2009)

I just uploaded one title. Pretty simple and clean platform. I liked that about it. I'm sorry to hear that about their search engine.


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## Carol (was Dara) (Feb 19, 2011)

Catana said:


> The money I earn each month from book sales helps the bottom line of my budget. It isn't a whole lot, but waiting several months to be paid isn't an option, especially since I have no idea how good my sales would be there.


I see where you're coming from, Catana. Apparently that $100 minimum was just for check payments anyway, so good luck if you take the plunge.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

erikhanberg said:


> Just got the email that the KDP for Kobo is out of beta and open to all writers!


Before I use it Kobo has to convince me of two things:

1. That they have customers and that they have improved their search engine enough that people can actually find books.

2. That they are now competent. Their history of problems is too extensive for me to trust them so they have to PROVE themselves to me.

ETA: I stopped distributing to Kobo 9 months ago because of their chronic habit of doing things like changing my prices without permission and never updating. Have they changed? Maybe. But I'll wait and see.

More GOOD retailers would be a good thing but the "good" part is important.


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## John Daulton (Feb 28, 2012)

jewishwriter said:


> I have a Kobo account, and after receiving their e-mail started to register for the writing life. I stopped midway because of the eight-page Kobo program terms and conditions to read before completion. Taking it home to study. Guess their terms should be weighed against Smashwords before deciding.
> 
> for those asking where to look: www.writinglife.kobobooks.com
> 
> I am curious whether an ISBN will be needed as is the case with a Smashwords upload.


The ebook ISBN is optional, and they do give you a spot for the ISBN of the primary print edition (also optional).


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

JRTomlin said:


> 1. That they have customers


Canada


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## teashopgirl (Dec 8, 2011)

I just uploaded Planet Explorers Walt Disney World. It should go live in a day or two. I'll report back if anything interesting happens with it!


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## Kia Zi Shiru (Feb 7, 2011)

Just got the email, now signing up. So happy about this! Kobo is the #2 seller of ebooks in the UK (at least as far as I can see around me) and is also available in the Netherlands. So I'm quite happy about this


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## RuthNestvold (Jan 4, 2012)

Do they have international distribution outside of the US and Canada? Or is this still a largely Amazon monopoly? (NOt to mention where authors are allowed to reside ...)


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## SunHi Mistwalker (Feb 28, 2012)

Yay! Exploring now!


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## FictionalWriter (Aug 4, 2010)

Books already uploaded and in publishing status. It was quick and easy.


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## AmberC (Mar 28, 2012)

I need info about pen names too. 
Anyone know?


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## FictionalWriter (Aug 4, 2010)

That's an understatement.



Monique said:


> Their search engine is stunningly bad. It makes you yearn for something as good as B&N's search engine.


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## Martin Perry (Aug 2, 2011)

What great joy is this!? You'll accept my existing mobi or epub files?

Instant love.


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## SunHi Mistwalker (Feb 28, 2012)

Sweetapple said:


> I need info about pen names too.
> Anyone know?


Yes you can use pen names. Here's a quote from their user guide:

_Author
The name of the person(s) who wrote the book. Please ensure that you enter
the author's name exactly as you would like it to appear in our store. If you
are a self-published author who writes under a pseudo name, please use
that name here. You can add multiple authors by selecting "Add author"._


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

Monique said:


> Except for the territory restriction (where your eBooks outside the IPP Territories shall be paid at Standard Terms but your eBooks within the IPP Territories will be paid at IPP Terms if they otherwise qualify), *all your eBooks must meet the IPP Criteria at all times* in order for Publisher to receive IPP Terms; *if any Work does not comply* with the IPP Criteria at any point during a sales period, you will be *paid for all sales during that period using the Standard Terms*.


Doh. So much for "you can set your price to free unlike at that Evil Other Company." Yeah, you can set it to free if you don't mind losing the 70% royalty on all your books for the entire pay period. I'm thinking Smashwords might still have a place here as a way to get a book up for free without killing your royalty rates across your other titles.


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## AmberC (Mar 28, 2012)

Great, thanks!


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Since I don't do Select, I could already sign up and started uploading my books. The process is fairly straight forward, though a bit slow on occasion, probably because the server is overwhelmed.

For payment options, they let me choose which currency I wanted to be paid in and asked me to enter my bank information, account and IBAN number, etc..., so I assume they'll pay via EFT.

My book are already converted into epub, though they also take other formats. You can check the formatting after uploading, too.

Ruth, Kobo operates in various territories, though their German site was very bad last time I checked. You can set the price in Euro, US dollar, Canadian dollar, Australian dollar, New Zealand dollar, Pound Sterling and Hongkong dollar or have it automatically converted based on your base price.

Here is a currency converter, for anyone who needs one: http://www.xe.com/ucc/


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## TJVitt (Feb 24, 2012)

http://www.kobobooks.com/kobowritinglife

So self-publishing directly to Kobo, thus cutting out Smashwords as the middle-man.

I can understand that dealing directly with Kobo would make changing and updating your e-books (not to mention initial publishing) more streamlined, but what exactly are the other benefits?


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Nathan Elliott said:


> Doh. So much for "you can set your price to free unlike at that Evil Other Company." Yeah, you can set it to free if you don't mind losing the 70% royalty on all your books for the entire pay period. I'm thinking Smashwords might still have a place here as a way to get a book up for free without killing your royalty rates across your other titles.


I'm not sure it's a deal-killer for me, but it's a bummer. If we're reading that correctly, I'm sure there will be a ton of posts in a few months wondering why they didn't get the 70%.


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## Kia Zi Shiru (Feb 7, 2011)

Gah, they don't allow regular enters? they will mess up all my formatting which both Amazon and Smashwords had no problem with up until now... I'll just try this file and will convert if needed at a later date...



RuthNestvold said:


> Do they have international distribution outside of the US and Canada? Or is this still a largely Amazon monopoly? (NOt to mention where authors are allowed to reside ...)


Yes they do. In the UK they sell them and I've seen them here in the Netherlands.
In the Netherlands there is no actual store that has their own ereader, so Kobo is the first one here to do that.


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## Anne Frasier (Oct 22, 2009)

Blake Sheridan said:


> Does anyone who has already signed up and started publishing through Writing Life know if Kobo is like Amazon with pen names (you can publish under multiple pen names from one account without your real name attaching) or like Apple (your real name attaches to whatever you publish unless you set up your pen name as DBA)?


did not know that about apple as i only have one book with them and it's under my real name. they are such a pain in the butt.


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## scottnicholson (Jan 31, 2010)

yes you can use multiple pen names under one account, and it even breaks them into separate "libraries" on your dashboard for each pen name


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## J.R. Thomson (Mar 30, 2011)

Monique said:


> http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Kobo


http://bit.ly/NxeaCh


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## PaigeAspen (Jun 5, 2012)

I did it!!!  Yea, I think!  Testing with one book for now.


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

Monique said:


> I'm not sure it's a deal-killer for me, but it's a bummer. If we're reading that correctly, I'm sure there will be a ton of posts in a few months wondering why they didn't get the 70%.


They have the same clause in their terms as Amazon, too. That a title must be priced equal to or lower as the same title at other retailers. So if you have something at 99 cents or free elsewhere and price it to $1.99 at Kobo to stay in the 70% royalty, and then Kobo price-matches, royalties slashed across the board for the month on every title? Mmmmnope. I'll be very careful about what I publish there. I don't know that they will price match, but they certainly could.

I predict a lot of people aren't going to read these things and will end up irate soon enough.


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## Kia Zi Shiru (Feb 7, 2011)

My formatting has gone all wonky... I'm not sure when or where but apparently it uses all my enters as if they were pagebreaks and I'm not sure how to fix this... Anyone else had this problems? (I upload .doc files)


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## Carol (was Dara) (Feb 19, 2011)

Put up my non-Select titles, so we'll see how it goes. The uploading process was super easy since they take ePub, bless them.


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

kiazishiru said:


> My formatting has gone all wonky... I'm not sure when or where but apparently it uses all my enters as if they were pagebreaks and I'm not sure how to fix this... Anyone else had this problems? (I upload .doc files)


Yep. http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,120607.0.html


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

shelleyo1 said:


> They have the same clause in their terms as Amazon, too. That a title must be priced equal to or lower as the same title at other retailers. So if you have something at 99 cents or free elsewhere and price it to $1.99 at Kobo to stay in the 70% royalty, and then Kobo price-matches, royalties slashed across the board for the month on every title? Mmmmnope. I'll be very careful about what I publish there. I don't know that they will price match, but they certainly could.
> 
> I predict a lot of people aren't going to read these things and will end up irate soon enough.


I don't remember seeing any clause about all books being affected by one book. Can you point that out?


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

Monique said:


> I'm not sure it's a deal-killer for me, but it's a bummer. If we're reading that correctly, I'm sure there will be a ton of posts in a few months wondering why they didn't get the 70%.


I don't know that it is a deal-killer either, but it makes me a lot less excited about Kobo's cluefulness. Why in the world should an author be penalized for posting a $0.99 short story alongside their 5.99 novels? I don't see the connection. It seems silly to give people an incentive to keep titles off your site, no? Maybe one could use SW for uploading short/cheap/free works and WL for longer works. But rather than deal with the meatgrinder, I will likely just keep the short titles off of KOBO. Round one to Amazon, who will continue to have the widest selection. Ding.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Yeah, it's a really strange restriction.


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

Monique said:


> I don't remember seeing any clause about all books being affected by one book. Can you point that out?


It's in the clause quoted above.



> Except for the territory restriction (where your eBooks outside the IPP Territories shall be paid at Standard Terms but your eBooks within the IPP Territories will be paid at IPP Terms if they otherwise qualify), *all your eBooks must meet the IPP Criteria at all times in order for Publisher to receive IPP Terms*; if *any Work does not comply *with the IPP Criteria at any point during a sales period, you will be paid for *all sales during that period using the Standard Terms*.


One title below $1.99 drops any 70% royalty works to 45%, unless that does not say what it says. (And who knows. They might clarify these things as we go, or something.)

So if you have a title at $1.99 on Kobo to stay in the IPP 70% range, but run it free on Smash or lower the price elsewhere and Kobo happens to price match, all your royalties drop to 45% for that pay period. If you run one free day during a month, all your royalties drop to 45%, according to that clause.


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## Kia Zi Shiru (Feb 7, 2011)

Great... I can't set my price in Dollars because I'm from europe, but at this moment my book is (converted) 0.80 cents in Euro. I can't put that price since it's lower than the 0.99 they want you to put.
I can manually change my price and get it to 0.99 in dollars to override, but all conversions will be made from my euro price and not my Dollar price (which both Amazon and Smashwords do) which will prob get me in trouble for EU and UK Amazon stores...

Until they fix this I won't publish... I'm not going to gamble this and have Amazon be annoyed with me...


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> It seems silly to give people an incentive to keep titles off your site, no?


It seems they want to encourage a certain price range. That can easily include discouraging certain products.


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## BRONZEAGE (Jun 25, 2011)

Underwhelmed so far. Our ops/tecchie gave it a perfectly good ISBN, and the print ISBN, and the Kobo system rejected it without recourse. The screen shows red flashing exclamation points for errors, good for sixth graders but _not so much_ for adults. The Help button leads to a fruitless loop.

The following from Kobo is a perfect example of nonsensespeak. Note that part B of the question is not answered. [_Who writes this stuff, someone in Tonga?_ ] :

"WHAT IS AN EISBN AND HOW DO I GET ONE? 
"ISBN is an abbreviation for International Standard Book Number. Similar to how 
hardcover texts have a separate ISBN from their paperback counterparts, the 
eBook version of your content requires a unique identifier as well.

You will be able to publish through Kobo without an eISBN, but we strongly advise
that you have one so you can take full advantage of Kobo's partnership with 
leading retailers around the world.

eISBNs are a requirement of a number of our international retail partners and the 
inclusion of an eISBN enables your book to be available from all of our eBook retail 
partners, so the inclusion of an eISBN will allow us to distribute your eBook 
through all possible channels. "

Good luck, everyone.


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## Anne Frasier (Oct 22, 2009)

BRONZEAGE said:


> Underwhelmed so far. Our ops/tecchie gave it a perfectly good ISBN, and the print ISBN, and the Kobo system rejected it without recourse. The screen shows red flashing exclamation points for errors, good for sixth graders but _not so much_ for adults. The Help button leads to a fruitless loop.
> 
> Good luck, everyone.


all spaces and dashes have to be removed from isbn.


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## Saja (Mar 22, 2012)

BRONZEAGE said:


> Underwhelmed so far. Our ops/tecchie gave it a perfectly good ISBN, and the print ISBN, and the Kobo system rejected it without recourse. The screen shows red flashing exclamation points for errors, good for sixth graders but _not so much_ for adults. The Help button leads to a fruitless loop.


Did you try it without the hyphens? My ISBN entry was rejected, too until I removed the hyphens. 

eta: Yep, what Anne said.


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## Maggie Dana (Oct 26, 2011)

I just downloaded Kobo's help manuals (PDFs). Sadly, they're all in italic. Disappointing, to say the least and it's also disappointing to learn their search engine makes B&N's search engine look brilliant. I had great hopes for Kobo, but for now, I'm reserving judgment and will wait and watch before jumping in with both feet. I'm also unimpressed with their web site, which seems to echo their PDF help manuals. Elegant looking, but not that easy to read.


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## Hugh Howey (Feb 11, 2012)

Just submitted my first book to Kobo, and I thought the interface was brilliant. Best of the bunch so far in my opinion.


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## Herc- The Reluctant Geek (Feb 10, 2010)

Their terms for sub-$1.99 sales in the US and Canada (45% or therabouts) is less than they pay through smashwords (60%). I'm fairly sure I've never sold a book outside those territories with Kobo.


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## GUTMAN (Dec 22, 2011)

I agree with Hugh.  I liked the interface.

It's nice to have another possible marketplace.  The limitations will reveal themselves in the future, I have no doubt, but 70% on $1.99 makes listing short works a no brainer, for those of us who write them.


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## BRONZEAGE (Jun 25, 2011)

Saja said:


> Did you try it without the hyphens? My ISBN entry was rejected, too until I removed the hyphens.


Thank you, Saja & Anne. Tecchie is off for the day, will no doubt try that tomorrow. No need to burn my time with it. I don't _do_ red exclamation points, or read manuals.

That Kobo screen should have a popup that says the desired ISBN format. ( And their FAQs are overly simplistic on any topic, IMO.)


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## Jnassise (Mar 22, 2010)

Nathan Elliott said:


> Yeah, you can set it to free if you don't mind losing the 70% royalty on all your books for the entire pay period.


This is INCORRECT.

I just spoke with the Director of Writinglife on this very topic and here is his response:

"We pay the terms on a per title/ISBN basis -- The wording will need to be adjusted to be a bit more clear on that. The non-IPP terms would *only apply* to the specific titles that fall outside the IPP term range&#8230;.."

As a beta user I can say that I've been very impressed with how author friendly Kobo has been. Bucket accounting would do nothing but annoy potential users and they are not that stupid.

-Joe


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

Jnassise said:


> This is INCORRECT.
> 
> I just spoke with the Director of Writinglife on this very topic and here is his response:
> 
> ...


That's good news! But it's not surprising that we interpreted it to mean exactly what it says.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

shelleyo1 said:


> That's good news! But it's not surprising that we interpreted it to mean exactly what it says.


LOL, yeah. It's clear; it's just wrong.


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## davidhburton (Mar 11, 2010)

Jnassise said:


> As a beta user I can say that I've been very impressed with how author friendly Kobo has been.


Ditto!!


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## pamstucky (Sep 16, 2011)

Ha! Big news indeed - this thread is buzzing! I signed up but don't have anything to upload right now. Will be really curious to hear what you who use the service think!


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

That was a pleasant and painless experience.
Registered my account and uploaded six books in epub in under half an hour.
Finally I'll have another place than my own website to direct readers to who asked for epub.
Nice, clean, shiny interface as well.


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## Victoria Champion (Jun 6, 2012)

I'm ready to upload to Kobo, but for one major obstacle: I can not figure out how to sideload my ePub into the Kobo Desktop app in order to preview it. I won't upload a file without being able to preview it in the native app/reader. (I have previewed my ePub in Nook Reader and it works fine and looks great there.) It says in the guidelines that ePubs won't be available for previewing in the submission process. Can anyone offer advice?


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Love it. Clean interface, easy to use.

Kobo used to be the ereader sold at Borders in Australia (remember Borders?) so I've always sold quite well on the platform.

One huge advantage over listing through Smashwords (more than a slightly increased royalty): control. I can publish and unpublish as I wish, at short notice. This makes moving titles in and out of Select so much easier.

Come on, Sony, what about it? My books on that site haven't updated for six months.


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## theaatkinson (Sep 22, 2010)

Since Kobo hasn't yet uploaded OIT from Smash even though it's been shipped forever, I went through writing life and did it myself. Now to opt out of a couple from SW and get them going too. (Since my sales through SW are pretty much a dead deer, I might as well get my zero stats in daily doses rather than quarterly. grin)

Those others are going to be a looong wait, methinks, before they're taken down from SW distribution. sigh.


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## Will Write for Gruel (Oct 16, 2010)

So will Kobo let us run sales, set the price to free, etc.? I didn't see any mention of this when I was clicking around on their writing life site. 

I wish Amazon and B&N would pay 70% on $1.99. That would be a nice price for shorter works.


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## Sara Fawkes (Apr 22, 2012)

OMG!! This release couldn't have been more perfect, today is my last day in Select for my series!!

SO AWESOME!!!! *rushes off to check it out*


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## Jnassise (Mar 22, 2010)

@Asher - yes, you can change the price at any time to allow for sales periods, including making it free.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Victoria Champion said:


> I'm ready to upload to Kobo, but for one major obstacle: I can not figure out how to sideload my ePub into the Kobo Desktop app in order to preview it. I won't upload a file without being able to preview it in the native app/reader. (I have previewed my ePub in Nook Reader and it works fine and looks great there.) It says in the guidelines that ePubs won't be available for previewing in the submission process. Can anyone offer advice?


I uploaded epubs and Kobo let me preview my epubs during the submission process via Adobe Digital Editions without any problems.

As for the royalty, I uploaded both 2.99 and 99 cent titles and it showed me the 70% royalty for the 2.99 titles. However, if your price for a certain book falls below the 70% threshold in one region, you'll only get 45% in all regions, even if your price is theoretically above the 70% threshold in some of them. But that's only fair, I guess.

So far I am quite happy with the upload process. The publishing is quick, too. One of the books I uploaded is already for sale.


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

> "The wording will need to be adjusted to be a bit more clear on that."


Glad to hear that it didn't come down that way from the top. I was hoping that did not reflect their actual thinking. But we are bound by the words they actually choose, not what they mean to say. I will watch for their new, improved TOS!


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## Victoria Champion (Jun 6, 2012)

CoraBuhlert said:


> I uploaded epubs and Kobo let me preview my epubs during the submission process via Adobe Digital Editions without any problems.


I want to preview my ebook in a Kobo app.


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

So glad I have a new shiny dashboard to check obsessively.


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## theaatkinson (Sep 22, 2010)

me too, Andrew


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Victoria Champion said:


> I want to preview my ebook in a Kobo app.


I don't have a Kobo app and Adobe Digital Editions is my default application for epub, so I guess that's why it opened there.


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## Anne Frasier (Oct 22, 2009)

Monique said:


> LOL, yeah. It's clear; it's just wrong.


har!


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## PaigeAspen (Jun 5, 2012)

Sarah Woodbury said:


> Mine says that it's published (The Bard's Daughter), but it won't appear when I search. Maybe 'published' doesn't mean what I think it means


Ditto... actually mine says "on sale"

It's there now!!! Yea!!! Only took about 2 hours for the whole process.


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

> You will not issue any press release or any other public disclosure about these Terms and your participation in Kobo Writing Life without our consent.
> 
> ... you agree not to disclose any information we disclose to you, including communications between you and us, ... any sales data sent to you from us with respect to your Works ...


If Writing Life is more profitable for you than KDP Select, remember not to tell a soul. Fair is fair. 

ETA: Also, if there is ever an issue that affects many, many people, make sure that you do not disclose Kobo's responses about the problem in public. Everyone should email them individually and ask exactly the same question.  Why must lawyers be like this?


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## Sarah Woodbury (Jan 30, 2011)

Whoops.  I removed instead of edited.  Anyway, mine is up now.


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

Andrew Ashling said:


> So glad I have a new shiny dashboard to check obsessively.


  Oh woe is me. Another screen to refresh. Another place to get returns!!!


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## Jason G. Anderson (Sep 29, 2010)

I was really excited about this, but looking at the payment screen I'm not sure they support authors in Australia (at least, not with payments via EFT), and I can't find anything either way about it on their site. I've sent them a message, but given the volume of help requests they're probably getting today, I don't expect to hear back for a while


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## kurzon (Feb 26, 2011)

From reading the terms and conditions, it looks to me that this platform is not agency.

That means that Kobo is going to discount as they please.

I'd be very wary about pricing with this and the impact on Amazon's 30/70 cut-off point.  Going to make sure my prices at both locations is at least $3.99 not $2.99 for all books I want in the upper range.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Jason G. Anderson said:


> I was really excited about this, but looking at the payment screen I'm not sure they support authors in Australia (at least, not with payments via EFT), and I can't find anything either way about it on their site. I've sent them a message, but given the volume of help requests they're probably getting today, I don't expect to hear back for a while


Of course it does. I entered Australian dollars, an address in Australia and got the option to enter or override prices in all other currencies, and it asked for EFT details.


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## Catana (Mar 27, 2012)

"That means that Kobo is going to discount as they please." Kurzon, that's no different than Amazon's policy. We have no control over whatever Amazon chooses to do with our prices.


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## Courtney Milan (Feb 27, 2011)

I'm up, but when I entered payment information, they didn't ask for my bank's routing number. Address, yes. Name, yes. Can they figure out the routing number from that? Sure.

But I am still somewhat disturbed. Can someone hold my hand and reassure me that this isn't doom?


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

There's some debate over whether the routing number should go in the SWIFT field or not. It's optional, but I don't understand how people are going to get paid without it. That said, I'm not an expert on these things and perhaps the Kobites know what's what.


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## Rick Gualtieri (Oct 31, 2011)

Courtney Milan said:


> I'm up, but when I entered payment information, they didn't ask for my bank's routing number. Address, yes. Name, yes. Can they figure out the routing number from that? Sure.
> 
> But I am still somewhat disturbed. Can someone hold my hand and reassure me that this isn't doom?


I was wondering the same thing, Courtney. Even more worrisome was that when I reloaded the page, the bank account number was there in plain text as opposed to obscured. Fingers crossed that I don't make a lot of sales and wind up paying some random dude 1000 miles away.


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## kurzon (Feb 26, 2011)

Catana said:


> "That means that Kobo is going to discount as they please." Kurzon, that's no different than Amazon's policy. We have no control over whatever Amazon chooses to do with our prices.


Yep, I know it's the same as Amazon's policy. But the two policies working together mean that if you price at $2.99 you're in high risk of dropping below the 70% cut-off if Amazon price-matches a Kobo discount.

Price-matching and discounting means it's best advised to have some discounting buffer above the cut-off points.


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## Courtney Milan (Feb 27, 2011)

Aha! While I was bemoaning my fate, they updated their information to make it clear that you should put your routing number in the SWIFT field.

I think this is confusing as written because they say it's optional, but I doubt it's optional for US bank holders, who don't get IBANs.


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## kurzon (Feb 26, 2011)

Australians have BSB codes, which are different again.


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## davidhburton (Mar 11, 2010)

Monique said:


> There's some debate over whether the routing number should go in the SWIFT field or not. It's optional, but I don't understand how people are going to get paid without it. That said, I'm not an expert on these things and perhaps the Kobites know what's what.


Yes, the routing number goes in the SWIFT field. I brought this up in the beta. When I look at my payment info, it shows Routing number / SWIFT code.


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## Victoria Champion (Jun 6, 2012)

Well I uploaded the epub so I could choose the download/preview and I was able to drag and drop that file onto Kobo Desktop app and the book is either blank or has a bunch of X's in boxes in a strange pattern, and nothing else, except it does have a TOC. Thank goodness I didn't just upload an otherwise working epub (works in other readers/apps) blind and hope for the best! I have no idea why it corrupted the epub unless it was during the conversion to kepub (a proprietary epub format that Kobo uses). I'll have to keep working on this before I can upload. Did any of you test your files in a Kobo reader before submitting? Did you test an epub? Did it work?


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## Pnjw (Apr 24, 2011)

So easy to use! I just uploaded all of my books. Fingers crossed they load smoothly.


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## Pnjw (Apr 24, 2011)

Victoria Champion said:


> Well I uploaded the epub so I could choose the download/preview and I was able to drag and drop that file onto Kobo Desktop app and the book is either blank or has a bunch of X's in boxes in a strange pattern, and nothing else, except it does have a TOC. Thank goodness I didn't just upload an otherwise working epub (works in other readers/apps) blind and hope for the best! I have no idea why it corrupted the epub unless it was during the conversion to kepub (a proprietary epub format that Kobo uses). I'll have to keep working on this before I can upload. Did any of you test your files in a Kobo reader before submitting? Did you test an epub? Did it work?


I tested mine in Adobe Additions. Downloading Kobo app now to test.


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## Tabitha Levin (Nov 1, 2011)

_For aussie authors:_ I've just put the BSB and Account number together in the same field (the account number field). I'll wait a day or two to make sure this is correct before uploading any books.


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## Jason G. Anderson (Sep 29, 2010)

Patty Jansen said:


> Of course it does. I entered Australian dollars, an address in Australia and got the option to enter or override prices in all other currencies, and it asked for EFT details.


Oh sure, you can select an Australian address, and Australian dollars. But without an explicit place to put the BSB, I'm not confident Kobo will actually be able to send me my money


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## Victoria Champion (Jun 6, 2012)

I dragged and drop the converted epub they gave me to preview during the submission process into the Nook and it works fine there.


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## Pnjw (Apr 24, 2011)

Victoria Champion said:


> I dragged and drop the converted epub they gave me to preview during the submission process into the Nook and it works fine there.


Hmm, I downloaded the Kobo app, but it would let me drag and drop files, nor can I find a way to load them there.


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## H.M. Ward (May 16, 2012)

Here's FAQs, in case no one posted it yet: http://download.kobobooks.com/learnmore/writinglife/KWL_FAQ.pdf


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## Victoria Champion (Jun 6, 2012)

Deanna Chase said:


> Hmm, I downloaded the Kobo app, but it would let me drag and drop files, nor can I find a way to load them there.


The only file I could drag and drop onto the icon for the Kobo Desktop app was the one they gave me to download and preview during the submission process. The original file wouldn't work.


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## Pnjw (Apr 24, 2011)

Victoria Champion said:


> The only file I could drag and drop onto the icon for the Kobo Desktop app was the one they gave me to download and preview during the submission process. The original file wouldn't work.


Okay, did that. Yep, the only thing that shows up is the cover. The rest is x's. Crap.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

davidhburton said:


> Yes, the routing number goes in the SWIFT field. I brought this up in the beta. When I look at my payment info, it shows Routing number / SWIFT code.


David, since you're Canadian 

Where do I put my branch number? Do I just do branch + account all in the account field?


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## Victoria Champion (Jun 6, 2012)

Deanna Chase said:


> Okay, did that. Yep, the only thing that shows up is the cover. The rest is x's. Crap.


Well at least I know it isn't just me. I wouldn't panic, though. It probably works in a Kobo reader, and there is some problem with the preview file interacting with the Desktop app. What you can do is buy a copy of your book and see if it works in the Kobo Desktop app if you access via sync with the cloud.

edited to add: I am considering trying this.


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## Pnjw (Apr 24, 2011)

Victoria Champion said:


> Well at least I know it isn't just me. I wouldn't panic, though. It probably works in a Kobo reader, and there is some problem with the preview file interacting with the Desktop app. What you can do is buy a copy of your book and see if it works in the Kobo Desktop app if you access via sync with the cloud.
> 
> edited to add: I am considering trying this.


Yeah, I'm going to buy them when they go live and check it out. It could just be a file issue from the Kobo app trying to open it when it isn't purchased through Kobo.

Edit: Because they look great in both Adobe Editions and Nook.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Jason G. Anderson said:


> Oh sure, you can select an Australian address, and Australian dollars. But without an explicit place to put the BSB, I'm not confident Kobo will actually be able to send me my money


I posted the whole lot in account info field. The string of digits that contains the BSB and account number is all they need. I don't know what the other crap is (routing? IBAN? WTF?). Since they sell in AUD and do Aussie transfers, they obviously have bank contacts in Australia. As far as I can tell, Kobo is not a US gig, which helps an awful lot. Even if I've entered it incorrectly, someone will sort it out when the time comes to pay, and until that time, the money will just sit there and not go anywhere.


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## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

Asher MacDonald said:


> So any thoughts on what advantages we have going direct with Kobo vs. letting Smashwords distribute there? Are there any marketing tools available if we go direct?


Aside from much quicker updating, I'd pay money not to have to use DOC files and Smashwords' meatgrinder.


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## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

Patty Jansen said:


> I posted the whole lot in account info field. The string of digits that contains the BSB and account number is all they need. I don't know what the other crap is (routing? IBAN? WTF?). Since they sell in AUD and do Aussie transfers, they obviously have bank contacts in Australia. As far as I can tell, Kobo is not a US gig, which helps an awful lot. Even if I've entered it incorrectly, someone will sort it out when the time comes to pay, and until that time, the money will just sit there and not go anywhere.


Aussie banks have routing numbers. Just search your bank's site and it will come up.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

re: benefits

You can also tailor your blurb much better than when Smashwords does it.


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## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

For those of you with books already on Kobo via Smashwords, what's the procedure? Remove the Kobo channel from Smashwords, wait for Kobo to remove the titles, then add them manually to Kobo?  Or go ahead and add them to Kobo first, meaning dupes in the system, and then delete the Kobo sales channel from Smashwords?


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## Victoria J (Jul 5, 2011)

I'm leaving the books I have on SW for Kobo up with SW. The next books I publish I'll go directly through Kobo.


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## Incognita (Apr 3, 2011)

Simon Haynes said:


> Aside from much quicker updating, I'd pay money not to have to use DOC files and Smashwords' meatgrinder.


This. So much this.


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## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

Victoria J said:


> I'm leaving the books I have on SW for Kobo up with SW. The next books I publish I'll go directly through Kobo.


I would, but the covers for all my books on Kobo are the old ones from last year, and haven't been updated despite me changing them on Smashwords. I'm tempted to nuke the listings and start over, going direct to Kobo. (That would also give me access to Kobo sales data on each one.)


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

Simon Haynes said:


> Aside from much quicker updating, I'd pay money not to have to use DOC files and Smashwords' meatgrinder.


Oh yes, yes, yes, and I'll raise you an arm and a leg.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

I just entered my account number, branch code and IBAN number under payment information. No idea why they need the bank address, but why not?

IBAN numbers are supposed to be internationally valid, so everybody should have an IBAN number regardless of country of origin. If you can't find yours (it's usually listed on your statements), contact your bank.

14 of my books are available in the store now. I assume that the remaining four are coming ****. 

ETA: All 18 books are up now.


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## Pnjw (Apr 24, 2011)

Deanna Chase said:


> Yeah, I'm going to buy them when they go live and check it out. It could just be a file issue from the Kobo app trying to open it when it isn't purchased through Kobo.
> 
> Edit: Because they look great in both Adobe Editions and Nook.


My free book just went live and I downloaded it from Kobo. It looks great in the Kobo app. *wipes brow* It's all good.

Another benefit is all the Goodreads ratings showed up. So now I have a four star rating with over 400 reviews there. The books that are up through Smashwords don't show the ratings.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

*whines*

Betsy is making me post here although I have nothing to say on the topic.


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## AmberC (Mar 28, 2012)

The Goodreads ratings automatically load to Kobo? That's rad.


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## Hugh Howey (Feb 11, 2012)

Sweetapple said:


> The Goodreads ratings automatically load to Kobo? That's rad.


It's nebular.


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## Pnjw (Apr 24, 2011)

Sweetapple said:


> The Goodreads ratings automatically load to Kobo? That's rad.


Yep! http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Haunted-on-Bourbon-Street/book--KIcQ2RsykK800gbtl91iw/page1.html?s=V_gc3C2w9UCpIWcLPkBboA&r=3


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

CoraBuhlert said:


> IBAN numbers are supposed to be internationally valid, so everybody should have an IBAN number regardless of country of origin. If you can't find yours (it's usually listed on your statements), contact your bank.


Fwiw, my bank does not have an IBAN.


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

My books all went live, including the *free* one (which I hope, through the magic of price-matching, will now become free on Amazon as well). 
I downloaded it, opened the epub to check, and it seems identical to my master-file.
My Goodreads ratings haven't shown up yet though.

Does anyone know whether there is reporting about the free downloads? Do they show up as sold at $0.00?


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## Victoria Champion (Jun 6, 2012)

Deanna Chase said:


> My free book just went live and I downloaded it from Kobo. It looks great in the Kobo app. *wipes brow* It's all good.
> 
> Another benefit is all the Goodreads ratings showed up. So now I have a four star rating with over 400 reviews there. The books that are up through Smashwords don't show the ratings.


Great news! I'll go ahead and upload mine.  I have a 4 star rating at Goodreads. I wonder if it will show up.


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## Pnjw (Apr 24, 2011)

Victoria Champion said:


> Great news! I'll go ahead and upload mine.  I have a 4 star rating at Goodreads. I wonder if it will show up.


I have my own ISBN number. I wonder if that has anything to do with it. I dunno, but I was happy to see all the reviews there.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

My email to Kobo:



> Hi there,
> 
> I've added several titles with Writing Life today. 2 show as published (No More Blank Screen, Eternally Jane). However, when I search under my name, I do not find them. Also, when I search under the titles, I do not find them. In fact, I have several books on Kobo under my writing name of Krista D. Ball, with different publishers, and none of those books are linked by my name.
> 
> ...


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> IBAN numbers are supposed to be internationally valid, so everybody should have an IBAN number regardless of country of origin. If you can't find yours (it's usually listed on your statements), contact your bank.


It's set up to work in any country, but I don't think there is an iBAN for a bank unless that country's central bank has adopted it. I think all the European countries plus about half the mideast countries use it. In the Western hemisphere, there is one South American country- French Guiana? Maybe some Caribbean islands tied into European banking use it also. Aruba? I don't think it has made any inroads in the Pacific. Seems like a good idea, but it really hasn't broken out of Europe.


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## Jnassise (Mar 22, 2010)

@Krista - It's been a few weeks since I uploaded my titles during the beta period, but if I remember right it took a few days for the search functions to catch up with the "published" announcement.

(Still, I think your request is a good one!)

-Joe


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Joe, most of my purchases are from Kobo these days (like 98% range). Unless I know what I'm looking for, I never find a book that I search for. EVER. In fact, I've had to go to author/publisher websites and get the links to books on kobo that way.


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## NRWick (Mar 22, 2011)

Krista D. Ball said:


> Joe, most of my purchases are from Kobo these days (like 98% range). Unless I know what I'm looking for, I never find a book that I search for. EVER. In fact, I've had to go to author/publisher websites and get the links to books on kobo that way.


Ooh, dang. That's just bad. Also, thanks for emailing Kobo with your plea for links to our books and better search. I was just popping into this thread to see if anyone had a trick to finding their book's link. It's pretty hard to find them! And I tried the things you mentioned. Like Joe mentioned, I think it's a delay since a couple hours later I found them via search, but come on! It should NOT be as difficult as it was. Hopefully they take your email to heart!

Thanks.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Terrence OBrien said:


> It's set up to work in any country, but I don't think there is an iBAN for a bank unless that country's central bank has adopted it. I think all the European countries plus about half the mideast countries use it. In the Western hemisphere, there is one South American country- French Guiana? Maybe some Caribbean islands tied into European banking use it also. Aruba? I don't think it has made any inroads in the Pacific. Seems like a good idea, but it really hasn't broken out of Europe.


I hardly ever deal with non-European banks, but IBAN was set up as a system to facilitate international transfers, so it's strange if so many American and other international banks don't use it.

That said, I had dealing with a Singaporean banks a while back and I'm pretty sure they had an IBAN number.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

I'm sure Kobo is just being hammered right now. I just wanted to get that initial feedback into the system. As a significant user of Kobo (I purchased at least $50/month, many months in the $100+ range), I do get a lot of recommendations and emails of books to purchase. However, they are all mega-sellers. So it's difficult to trace and search other books and authors. It's also very difficult to find books by authors who trad and self-publish, since they end up being entered into the system slightly differently.

For example, I am Krista D. Ball, and Ball, Krista D. Now, you'd think that you'd get the same books with those searches. No, not even close. In fact, I was harassing one of my publishers about not being on Kobo, when we discovered I'd been there all along. Now, how can you sell a book when you can't even link to it?


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## RM Prioleau (Mar 18, 2011)

I previously had _The Necromancer's Apprentice_ published directly to Kobo rather than go through Smashwords. If I sign up for Writing Life, is there a way for me to link my previous publishing account with the Writing Life one? I saw something about a Kobo Publisher ID or something. How/Where do you find that? I'm thinking that's what I need to link my account, but I'm not sure where to go.


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## John Daulton (Feb 28, 2012)

RM Prioleau said:


> I previously had _The Necromancer's Apprentice_ published directly to Kobo rather than go through Smashwords. If I sign up for Writing Life, is there a way for me to link my previous publishing account with the Writing Life one? I saw something about a Kobo Publisher ID or something. How/Where do you find that? I'm thinking that's what I need to link my account, but I'm not sure where to go.


As I recall, there was a prompt asking for previous account info. I could be wrong, but I do think I saw that.


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## Jnassise (Mar 22, 2010)

@Krista - hey, I didn't say their search was any good, just that the system hadn't propagated your info to the server yet. 

@RM - Kobo's staff is working on a process to link previous titles loaded through the old system to the new platform but they aren't yet ready to unleash it yet.  A few more weeks I hear.  (Note - I'm not talking about stuff linked via Smashwords, but those with actual Kobo accounts who loaded the old way via ftp.)


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## WilliamEsmont (May 3, 2010)

Deanna Chase said:


> Yep! http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Haunted-on-Bourbon-Street/book--KIcQ2RsykK800gbtl91iw/page1.html?s=V_gc3C2w9UCpIWcLPkBboA&r=3


Hmm.. no goodreads ratings for mine yet. I wonder if it takes awhile for it to go through...


----------



## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Jnassise said:


> @Krista - hey, I didn't say their search was any good, just that the system hadn't propagated your info to the server yet.


Ha! very true


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## Pnjw (Apr 24, 2011)

WilliamEsmont said:


> Hmm.. no goodreads ratings for mine yet. I wonder if it takes awhile for it to go through...


They didn't show up on my other two that I just loaded tonight either.  Who knows.


----------



## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

I registerd one title this morning and a few hours later, it has been approved.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Now, I will say that indies do end up on email recommendations. I've gotten ones for Courtney a couple of times.


----------



## sarracannon (Apr 19, 2011)

I uploaded my books to Kobo about an hour and half ago and they just now started appearing in the searches when I searched for my name, so maybe it just is on a slight delay.


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## Guest (Jul 17, 2012)

How do you link your Goodreads reviews with Kobo?  That would be pretty cool to sync both sites.


----------



## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> hardly ever deal with non-European banks, but IBAN was set up as a system to facilitate international transfers, so it's strange if so many American and other international banks don't use it.


It probably has more to do with why Europe chose to go with it. They were consolidating their banking along with the growth of the EU, the EuroZone, and the ECB. I think the ECB only started in '97? '98? They had an incentive for a more unified system.

The US already had its Federal Reserve system that covered a roughly comparable sized banking system with a single currency, and it worked fine. With Canada and Mexico, the whole continent worked smoothly. Other countries had similar situations. So the non-Europeans weren't creating new institutions encompassing previously independent systems. They just never felt the need. It would take a mighty strong argument to get the Americans to fix what ain't broke.

The Arabs wanted more ties with each other, so when they looked around, the IBAN was the logical system, and it had the added advantage of already having the Europeans behind it.


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## Iwritelotsofbooks (Nov 17, 2010)

Has anyone loaded up a book, tried it out in Adobe digital editions, have it look fine, then open in their kobo reader only to get x's through every single letter?


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## David Adams (Jan 2, 2012)

Hey, um, so dumb question time...

Why would I use KWL instead of Smashwords? Better royalties?


----------



## Will Write for Gruel (Oct 16, 2010)

Jnassise said:


> @Asher - yes, you can change the price at any time to allow for sales periods, including making it free.


Thanks! One last question: If during a month the book is priced at $3 and for a bit is priced at $0, does Kobo know to give a royalty for the $3 sales for that month?

Thanks.


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## TheSFReader (Jan 20, 2011)

David Adams said:


> Hey, um, so dumb question time...
> 
> Why would I use KWL instead of Smashwords? Better royalties?


I think so, and better control (publishing directly the epub, less delays, finer price tuning etc.).


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## Richardcrasta (Jul 29, 2010)

lacymarankevinmichael said:


> Has anyone loaded up a book, tried it out in Adobe digital editions, have it look fine, then open in their kobo reader only to get x's through every single letter?


I used to use Adobe Digital editions, on the advice of Smashwords. Then it was Sigil so I could actually EDIT, and now it's Calibre. I'm not sure if they all show the same thing, and which one is better, and whether the missing chapter headings in Sigil will show in epub. If the reports about Adobe Digital Editions are good, I might download it again.


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## Richardcrasta (Jul 29, 2010)

To me, the $100 limit on royalty payments is daunting. I publish under 3 names, and that means I would have to earn over $100 from my books under each name to get my payment on time. Since, as I understand, to use a pen name you would have to have a separate account from that of your regular name (kobo assumes the name on the account is the author name when it creates the epub). 

Unless one can make the assumption that with direct publication, and with Kobo's extended markets, one's sales will double or triple.


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## Carol (was Dara) (Feb 19, 2011)

Richardcrasta said:


> To me, the $100 limit on royalty payments is daunting. I publish under 3 names, and that means I would have to earn over $100 from my books under each name to get my payment on time. Since, as I understand, to use a pen name you would have to have a separate account from that of your regular name (kobo assumes the name on the account is the author name when it creates the epub).


The $100 limit is for authors being paid via check. Those choosing the EFT option only need a $25 minimum. Also, when you upload your book there's a field for filling out the author name, which works the same as on KDP. You can put in any name you like, it doesn't have to be the name you registered with, so multiple pen names shouldn't be problematic.


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## Richardcrasta (Jul 29, 2010)

Dara England said:


> The $100 limit is for authors being paid via check. Those choosing the EFT option only need a $25 minimum. Also, when you upload your book there's a field for filling out the author name, which works the same as on KDP. You can put in any name you like, it doesn't have to be the name you registered with, so multiple pen names shouldn't be problematic.


Oh, thanks a lot for answering these two questions! That's terrific.


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## Zelah Meyer (Jun 15, 2011)

It sounds like it will be good once they've worked out the launch issues.

I'll probably hold fire for now and look at setting up an account when I launch my next title.  Hopefully the initial launch issues will have smoothed out by then.


----------



## Jeroen Steenbeeke (Feb 3, 2012)

Signed up and publishing Gift of the Destroyer now. Only problem I encountered was figuring out the Branch Address of my bank. Also, I need to read up on Canadian tax treaty exemption (they have such a treaty with the Netherlands) and what the requirements are.

Seeing as Smashwords isn't an option for me*, and Lulu only distributes to B&N and the iBookStore, having an extra outlet is always welcome.

* Smashwords requires .doc files. I write using LaTeX. Converting LaTeX to .doc is a nightmare that requires lots of manual corrections. On the other hand, I can automatically convert LaTeX to both zipped Kindle HTML as well as EPUB (they're not that much different), which covers both Amazon and Lulu. Seeing as Kobo also uses EPUB, publishing on Kobo is simply a matter of going through another Wizard.


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## RuthNestvold (Jan 4, 2012)

CoraBuhlert said:


> Ruth, Kobo operates in various territories, though their German site was very bad last time I checked. You can set the price in Euro, US dollar, Canadian dollar, Australian dollar, New Zealand dollar, Pound Sterling and Hongkong dollar or have it automatically converted based on your base price.


Thanks, Cora, that's excellent news! I'll experiment with a book that's coming off Select tomorrow.


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

Asher MacDonald said:


> Thanks! One last question: If during a month the book is priced at $3 and for a bit is priced at $0, does Kobo know to give a royalty for the $3 sales for that month?
> 
> Thanks.


Sounds like they should. If not, they have serious accounting problems. But by pricing at 0 for a while, you will knock all books out of the 70% royalty as the TOS are currently written. Even if, as was claimed above, that is going to be reworded, then the wording still would seem to indicate that the brief sale still knocks that book out of the high royalty for he entire pay period. Just have a careful look at the TOS before you decide what to do and keep in mind that you are agreeing to what it *says* not what they claim it *will say* once "clarified". They may improve that section, but as it stands, it will negatively impact all your books' royalties if any book is priced below 1.99 or whatever the minimum IPP price is. I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.


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## Kia Zi Shiru (Feb 7, 2011)

I just published. If Kobo is going to be annoying about the price they should fix their pricing thing, I'm not gonna be worrying about that any more. It's not my fault they won't accept the right price for my book. I did put the dollar price at 0.99 so they can always use that as the actual price comparison. It's now a higher price than Amazon has set, but that won't matter to Amazon anyway 

Let's see how quick they get it live so I can link to it


----------



## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Does anybody know if Kobo has something like Author Central where you can upload your author bio and if they have tagging? Since I couldn't find either.


----------



## Guest (Jul 17, 2012)

Last night, I sent Kobo's customer service this question:



> Hello, I recently signed up for the Kobo Writing Life platform and saw this in the terms of service:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


This morning, I received this response:



> Hi Joe:
> 
> This is a term that was not worded properly and is causing some confusion.
> 
> ...


----------



## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

David Adams said:


> Hey, um, so dumb question time...
> 
> Why would I use KWL instead of Smashwords? Better royalties?


The big thing for me is getting in the right categories. Despite selecting appropriate categories on Smashwords, I always get thrown into useless, non-relevant ones (like putting a historical novel in nonfiction/maps & letter, or just in a general "fiction" cat, which is no good).

Now, with KWL, I can select three, correct categories.

I suspect this categorisation issue is (part of) the reason why indies usually do less well outside of Amazon. If readers can't find your book, how can they buy it?


----------



## Jeroen Steenbeeke (Feb 3, 2012)

Well, their publishing times don't seem to be accurate. Only took them 3 hours rather than the 24-72 hours listed 

http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Gift-of-the-Destroyer/book-74_DjeVL2kiXQ6Aq9ldTJg/page1.html


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## Susan Kaye Quinn (Aug 8, 2011)

> Hey, um, so dumb question time...
> 
> Why would I use KWL instead of Smashwords? Better royalties?


For me, it's setting my price directly and not having to rely on Smashwords distribution - which was recently a huge headache (still is).


----------



## JohnHindmarsh (Jun 3, 2011)

Thought I would see what SF books they have -

_The list "Science Fiction" is empty or you may be geographically restricted from viewing its contents - try selecting a new list._

OK, I am in Bangkok at the moment, but that message is bewildering.

Sob - they don't want my book...



John


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

I format my books in epub-format with Sigil. I like the control it gives me. I then convert them to mobi which I upload to Amazon. Since their azw-format is basically mobi, I'm reasonably sure little extra conversion takes place.
Since I already have epub-files I love I can upload them directly to Kobo.
I asked Mark Coker on Twitter when it would be possible to do the same to Smashwords. After five days still no answer.
Meanwhile I uploaded seven books in under thirty minutes to Kobo.


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

sibelhodge said:


> Thanks for sharing. I wonder if they will be changing the wording (when I can find it!)


You can watch for the changes here:

https://writinglife.kobobooks.com/resources/serviceAgreement.html

So far there has been no change to the problematic part. (Assuming they are on the ball, you can just watch for the revision date at the top to change rather than scrolling down to check each time. Right now it is the July 13 version.)


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## Lisa J. Yarde (Jul 15, 2010)

There seems to be a debate over whether an ISBN is required to participate directly in Kobo. Does anyone know?


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## Kia Zi Shiru (Feb 7, 2011)

Lisa J. Yarde said:


> There seems to be a debate over whether an ISBN is required to participate directly in Kobo. Does anyone know?


You don't need one. You CAN use one but it is not mandatory.


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

Lisa J. Yarde said:


> There seems to be a debate over whether an ISBN is required to participate directly in Kobo. Does anyone know?


You don't need one. The field is marked "optional."
If you don't have one, they provide you with a generic (?) one of their own.


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## Kia Zi Shiru (Feb 7, 2011)

My book is now live. Let's hope I got in soon enough that I can get a bit of exposure before the rest of the people get in


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## Thomas Watson (Mar 8, 2012)

Andrew Ashling said:


> You don't need one. The field is marked "optional."
> If you don't have one, they provide you with a generic (?) one of their own.


Something like an ASIN, perhaps?


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## libbyfh (Feb 11, 2010)

This is all very exciting, and I uploaded my books, but who are Kobo's customers? Do they give out any numbers? I know they're big in Canada, and I hope they grow in Europe, but I suspect sales are going to be v-e-r-y slow. 

Would love to be wrong... anyone have any data?


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

libbyfh said:


> I suspect sales are going to be v-e-r-y slow.


Then why did you bother?


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

I jumped into the Kobo Pool 

Only problem I noticed was every time I tried to upload my cover or epub file, I'd get an error that they couldn't upload it at this time. After 5 or 6 of those, I clicked save to see what the 4 step publishing process would do, and when I went back to those pages, the content was there. So a little buggy, or just a TON of people trying to publish at once (imagining a stampeded right now). 

I'm not on Smashwords anymore. I could never get into their premium catalog, then read about all of the problems trying to make changes and decided it was a godsend. I want full control over my listings with each distributor.

Kobo devices were also sold by Books A Million here in the U.S. though now they are all Nook devices. With Target recently yanking Kindles out of their stores (but now Walmart carries them) and now selling Kobo on their site... it looks like Kobo will be the ereader for Target.


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## Kia Zi Shiru (Feb 7, 2011)

Anyone else having the problem that Kobo tries to put everything on two pages? This really really confuses/annoys me while trying to figure out if my formatting is right...


*edit* checked another book, apparently this is normal and mostly looks weird because I use a sample to check the book.


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## AmberC (Mar 28, 2012)

My Target use to stock Kindle, Kobo and Nook. Just a month ago I went and looked and compared all three. When I went this weekend they only had Nooks. They said they no longer carried Kindle or Kobo.


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

I'm so glad you guys are trying it out! I'm a bit jealous to not be jumping in the pool with you, but my first book rolls out of Select on the 27th and I'll be there! Being able to put my books directly into categories sounds very exciting!


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> I jumped into the Kobo Pool
> 
> Only problem I noticed was every time I tried to upload my cover or epub file, I'd get an error that they couldn't upload it at this time. After 5 or 6 of those, I clicked save to see what the 4 step publishing process would do, and when I went back to those pages, the content was there. So a little buggy, or just a TON of people trying to publish at once (imagining a stampeded right now).


I've had that problem as well and it sometimes took several tries to get the cover uploaded. I guess it's just server overload from everybody trying to upload their books all at once.


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## Saul Tanpepper (Feb 16, 2012)

Bwah ha ha hah. I'm waiting for you all to jump the Select ship and crowd the KWL yacht, then my book will be the only one in KDP-S and all I'll need is one borrow to grab the whole kitty!  

Actually, been watching this thread with intense interest as I've been waiting for KWL to open up. So good to see everyone posting their experiences here.


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## Saul Tanpepper (Feb 16, 2012)

So, if your title falls beneath the 1.99 (70%) royalty rate at any time during the payment period, then all sales of that title for the payment period get the 45% royalty rate? Something to consider when running your promos. I suspect we may see a lot of promos (of otherwise poorly selling books) right at the ends of the payment periods when the author knows how well/poorly their books are selling and there's minimal loss of royalties of the books sold earlier in the period. It also means most authos would avoid running a promo at the _beginning _ of the payment period.

If I'm reading this correctly.


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## Jnassise (Mar 22, 2010)

Saul Tanpepper said:


> So, if your title falls beneath the 1.99 (70%) royalty rate at any time during the payment period, then all sales of that title for the payment period get the 45% royalty rate? Something to consider when running your promos. I suspect we may see a lot of promos (of otherwise poorly selling books) right at the ends of the payment periods when the author knows how well/poorly their books are selling and there's minimal loss of royalties of the books sold earlier in the period. It also means most authos would avoid running a promo at the _beginning _ of the payment period.
> 
> If I'm reading this correctly.


No. It has already been stated, twice, that this is incorrect.


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## Loren DeShon (Jun 15, 2011)

I uploaded mine last night and it is for sale this morning—no problems encountered.


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

Saul Tanpepper said:


> So, if your title falls beneath the 1.99 (70%) royalty rate at any time during the payment period, then all sales of that title for the payment period get the 45% royalty rate? Something to consider when running your promos. I suspect we may see a lot of promos (of otherwise poorly selling books) right at the ends of the payment periods when the author knows how well/poorly their books are selling and there's minimal loss of royalties of the books sold earlier in the period. It also means most authos would avoid running a promo at the _beginning _ of the payment period.
> 
> If I'm reading this correctly.


That's what the Terms say, but that's apparently not what Kobo meant, according to several sources who have asked directly and been told so.

If your title gets priced below $1.99, you get 45% on that title, not all of them.

As far as "that period" in the terms, being the period in which you get the standard terms rather than the higher rate, I would assume it means _that period during which the title is priced below $1.99_ and not the entire pay period, as it seems to mean. But I don't really know.

I'm sure they'll fix the wording as soon as they can. I would imagine they're swamped with emails right now about that and other things.


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## Saul Tanpepper (Feb 16, 2012)

Jnassise said:


> No. It has already been stated, twice, that this is incorrect.


I've read the entire thread, @Jnassise. I'm clear on what KWL is now claiming regarding their ToS and book vs catalogue impacts. My point hasn't been addressed, although it has been alluded to by:



Nathan Elliott said:


> Sounds like they should. If not, they have serious accounting problems. But by pricing at 0 for a while, you will knock all books out of the 70% royalty as the TOS are currently written. Even if, as was claimed above, that is going to be reworded, then the wording still would seem to indicate that the brief sale still knocks that book out of the high royalty for he entire pay period. Just have a careful look at the TOS before you decide what to do and keep in mind that you are agreeing to what it *says* not what they claim it *will say* once "clarified". They may improve that section, but as it stands, it will negatively impact all your books' royalties if any book is priced below 1.99 or whatever the minimum IPP price is. I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.


My point is that a book falling below the 70% royalty price at any time during the payment period drops _all _ sales of _that title_ down to the 45% royalty rate for the payment period. If, for example, you sell a hundred copies of your book at $5 (earning you $350), but then you drop the price of that book to free on the last day of the period, then you lose $125 (45% royalty on 100 books sold at $5 = @225). What this will effectively do is prevent authors from running any promo or dropping their price until the end of the payment period (when they know they won't be losing much in terms of earlier royalties).


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## Jnassise (Mar 22, 2010)

@Saul - Ah, I see what you are saying now.  Sorry for the confusion.

My gut tells me that that isn't what they are intending to say either, but I'll ask Mark (the guy in charge of writinglife) directly and see what he says.  When I get an answer I'll post it here.  

-Joe


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

Ahem.
I have sold my first book ever on Kobo.
Yay.


----------



## theaatkinson (Sep 22, 2010)

sweet, Andrew. Congrats!


----------



## The 13th Doctor (May 31, 2012)

Congrats, Andrew!

I've got two books up and still waiting...


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## Kia Zi Shiru (Feb 7, 2011)

Andrew Ashling said:


> Ahem.
> I have sold my first book ever on Kobo.
> Yay.


Damn... You're quick!


----------



## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Face palm I forgot that the search was case-sensitive. I find some of my stuff when I search Krista D. Ball, but not krista d. ball. My ball, krista d. stuff (as listed by Lightening Source) does not come up.

*sobs*


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## Guest (Jul 17, 2012)

I've noticed that if you price your book at $2.99 USD, it falls below the 70% royalty threshold in GBP.  The way to fix this is to manually set the price at 1.99 GBP.

It would probably be wise to change this on KDP as well.


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## Jnassise (Mar 22, 2010)

@Saul - here's the answer from Kobo:

I asked -- "Say I sell my book for $5.00 from July 1 to July 15th.  Then, on the 16th, I lower the price to $0.99 for a week long sale.  Will all sales for the month of July be paid at 45% (as per that $0.99 price point) or would only those sales made during the period with the lower price be paid at the lower royalty rate?"

Kobo replied -- "The sales will be reflective of the price at the point it sells. So, from July 1st to July 15 all books sold get you 70%For the week it’s at 99 cents, all books sold get you 45%. If you raise the price back up on the 22nd, all sales after that get you 70% again. Terms have been re-written to be a bit less confusing (I hope) and are getting re-posted."

Combined with their earlier response that this is only referring to the book in question and not all books a writer has up for sale, this should clear up any issues about losing royalties on other books or books sold before or after a certain sale period in a given month.

Hope that helps.
-Joe


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

Another report from the trenches.... 

My book went live in just a few hours, and yes, kobo gives you an eisbn after the book posts. I noticed on the listing "Reviews from Goodreads" which was empty. I had an immediate AHA! moment and ran to my goodreads listing. I edited it to remove the ASIN (which Goodreads has cut ties with Amazon anyway) and put in the eisbn that Kobo assigned me. Voila! All of my Goodreads reviews immediately populated to my book's Kobo page, making it not look so bare.

Interesting too, my book, with 0 sales, is ranked #6964 in Contemporary Romance, #15414 in Romance. Hmmm, I like that lack of competition!  I will most happy to be a big fish in a small pond  But I doubt it will last.


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## Saul Tanpepper (Feb 16, 2012)

Jnassise said:


> @Saul - here's the answer from Kobo:
> 
> I asked -- "Say I sell my book for $5.00 from July 1 to July 15th. Then, on the 16th, I lower the price to $0.99 for a week long sale. Will all sales for the month of July be paid at 45% (as per that $0.99 price point) or would only those sales made during the period with the lower price be paid at the lower royalty rate?"
> 
> ...


Cheers, Joe.  Really liking how responsive Kobo is trying to be. Can't expect them to be perfect right out of the gate, so this is looking very positive for them. Will be interesting to see how/if Amazon responds. Companies hate giving the appearance of reacting to a competitor's moves, but combine the flight from Select with this and Ammy's got to do something (just my guess.).


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## amiblackwelder (Mar 19, 2010)

Only onto f my books is synced to goodreads review, is this done automatically or do I have to hit something?


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## Kia Zi Shiru (Feb 7, 2011)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Another report from the trenches....
> 
> My book went live in just a few hours, and yes, kobo gives you an eisbn after the book posts. I noticed on the listing "Reviews from Goodreads" which was empty. I had an immediate AHA! moment and ran to my goodreads listing. I edited it to remove the ASIN (which Goodreads has cut ties with Amazon anyway) and put in the eisbn that Kobo assigned me. Voila! All of my Goodreads reviews immediately populated to my book's Kobo page, making it not look so bare.
> 
> Interesting too, my book, with 0 sales, is ranked #6964 in Contemporary Romance, #15414 in Romance. Hmmm, I like that lack of competition!  I will most happy to be a big fish in a small pond  But I doubt it will last.


I can outdo you  No sales and no reviews anywhere 
Young Adult - fiction #374
fantasy - contemporary #44
kids & teens - fiction #657

But yeah, I hope I can get a couple of sales while it's not too full yet  Hopefully I can get a little bit of a headstart while people are still interested


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

amiblackwelder said:


> Only onto f my books is synced to goodreads review, is this done automatically or do I have to hit something?


See 2 posts above yours.


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## Romi (Apr 4, 2011)

kiazishiru said:


> I can outdo you  No sales and no reviews anywhere
> Young Adult - fiction #374
> fantasy - contemporary #44
> kids & teens - fiction #657
> ...


Just wondering; has anyone been able to "find" their book on any of these lists we showed up on with no sales? For example, my book lists me at #17 in Humor and Comedy, but when you click through to the bestseller list, #17 is something else and my books are nowhere (and rightly so, I haven't sold any)...hmm. So I wonder what those rankings really mean, in terms of customers being able to find your book.


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## Victoria Champion (Jun 6, 2012)

I published mine yesterday evening and it is still in "_Publishing_" stage.


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## amiblackwelder (Mar 19, 2010)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Another report from the trenches....
> 
> My book went live in just a few hours, and yes, kobo gives you an eisbn after the book posts. I noticed on the listing "Reviews from Goodreads" which was empty. I had an immediate AHA! moment and ran to my goodreads listing. I edited it to remove the ASIN (which Goodreads has cut ties with Amazon anyway) and put in the eisbn that Kobo assigned me. Voila! All of my Goodreads reviews immediately populated to my book's Kobo page, making it not look so bare.
> 
> Interesting too, my book, with 0 sales, is ranked #6964 in Contemporary Romance, #15414 in Romance. Hmmm, I like that lack of competition!  I will most happy to be a big fish in a small pond  But I doubt it will last.


I did that, but nothing changed. I noticed on mine it only has ISBN for AMAZON, I don't see an ASIN. Should I look for one on goodreads?


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## Lanie Jordan (Feb 23, 2011)

I put up my newest release. I'm going to give it a few days before I take my stuff out of Kobo distro from SW, though, just to be on the safe side. 

So far, I'm really liking the Dashboard and the ease of uploading.


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## PaigeAspen (Jun 5, 2012)

Uploaded to Kobo yesterday, Smashwords approved my books for the  Premium catalog today. Coincidental? So, I opted out of Kobo on SW.


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## Tabitha Levin (Nov 1, 2011)

Can you price free at Kobo or do you still need to go through SW to do this?


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## Jnassise (Mar 22, 2010)

@Romi - Yes, my books are showing up roughly (within ten slots) of their places noted on the catalog page.  (Page says #32, book is at #37, that kind of thing)


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## Jnassise (Mar 22, 2010)

Someone asked up thread who Kobo's customers are. According to this interview at Digital Book World with exec VP Michael Tamblyn, they have nine million users in 190 countries.

http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2012/kobos-michael-tamblyn-publishers-should-experiment-more/?et_mid=568460&rid=188485589

That's a nice size market.

-Joe


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

Does Kobo have direct wireless connections to the Kobo hand units? Does it mimic the way Kindle and Nook use wireless?


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## Romi (Apr 4, 2011)

If anyone can answer...I'm guessing Kobo doesn't list free books by category? I couldn't find that anywhere. I just noticed that when you go to free books, it says you either do a keyword search and then pull down the menu to see "free only," or you can look at the "free list," but that only has 175 titles on it, and I couldn't find mine (which is free). 

I'm just wondering how a keyword search would help a customer who's never heard of your name or book title find your free book...

(I'm trying not to compare it to Amazon because they seem to be in their own league re: the way books are organized, but I'm curious about how books get visibility....)

Thanks in advance, and overall I'm still glad to be out of "Kobo shipment" limbo via Smashwords!


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## Romi (Apr 4, 2011)

Jnassise said:


> @Romi - Yes, my books are showing up roughly (within ten slots) of their places noted on the catalog page. (Page says #32, book is at #37, that kind of thing)


Okay thanks! Maybe mine didn't show because I changed categories this morning; I'll wait and see!


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## Saul Tanpepper (Feb 16, 2012)

So, are folks going DRM-free or with DRM?


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

Oh boy...... another DRM debate.... 

I go DRM free. I am not convinced that people who pirate digital content in this day and age are "lost sales." Since they are not lost sales to me, I care not that they risk malware infections etc. by participating on those sites. 

And MANY ereader peeps convert their mobis to epubs and back and forth because many households have multiple devices. Really, there are tons of ways to strip DRM and the only people who use them are up to no good. So to me, if it's a lock that still let's the thieves in but the honest man out, I'll just leave the lock off. Oh, and realize my own small insignificance means it's highly unlikely my book will be pirated.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Terrence OBrien said:


> Does Kobo have direct wireless connections to the Kobo hand units? Does it mimic the way Kindle and Nook use wireless?


My Kobo Vox is like a Kindle Fire. I search, I purchase, it updates without me plugging in. I can also remove the sd card and add books to that and add to my library, so great for Smashwords purchases.

I've never owned another kind of Kobo, however. I don't think the others are wireless; I think they are more like the Sony touch ereaders.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Romi said:


> I'm just wondering how a keyword search would help a customer who's never heard of your name or book title find your free book...
> 
> (I'm trying not to compare it to Amazon because they seem to be in their own league re: the way books are organized, but I'm curious about how books get visibility....)


I can probably answer this, since I'm a heavy Kobo user.

The honest answer: they don't.

I've been told that I'm not the typical user. I don't "surf" for books. I don't troll for freebies. I don't troll for specials. I know exactly what I'm looking for. I rarely browse. It is difficult to find the books I'm looking for on Kobo as it is. 

Now, there are the categories on the left that I sometimes open and browse through quickly to see if any of my favourites have a book out that I don't know about (that's how I discovered Saintcrow had a new book out with Orbit). But those are often all big sellers and big names.

I do rely heavily on the emails I get from Kobo. Those are often very good at recommending books to me, and they don't always recommend big name publishers. Courtney Milan's books, for example, have shown up a couple of times in my email recommends. A couple of the SF writers, too, who self-publish. So, it' happens. Of course, I buy a lot of big name big publisher books, so those get recommended to me more often than not. However, I do think that's because of my buying habits.


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## Romi (Apr 4, 2011)

Krista D. Ball said:


> I can probably answer this, since I'm a heavy Kobo user.
> 
> The honest answer: they don't.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the info, this is helpful!


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## Jnassise (Mar 22, 2010)

I buy half a dozen books a month from Kobo.  Certainly not a power user like Krista but I use it a fair share.  While the search isn't great, I don't think it is a bad as B&N's to be honest.

A few things that I've noted through trial and error...

1) Full names of authors (or series characters) are best, usually in the First Last order.  Searching for Davenport will get your lots of non-fiction.  Searching for Lucas Davenport will get you the Prey series by John Sanford plus the nonfiction after it.  Searching for "Lucas Davenport" will get you mostly just the Prey novels.

2) Quotes around phrases will return results for just that phrase.  Searching for "Jon Merz" gets me the thirteen books published by my friend Jon.  Searching for Jon Merz without quotes gets me everything with Jon or Merz in it.

3) Categories on Kobo contain a lot of stuff that I wouldn't necessarily categorize that way - such as George R.R. Martin books showing up in the top 20 on a search for "urban fantasy."  On the other hand, I get the same thing at Amazon, so I'm not seeing a major difference there.


All of these tips are just basic search engine functionality, which isn't surprising.  We've just been spoiled by the broad results that Google and Amazon give us on a daily basis.


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## Guest (Jul 18, 2012)

PaigeAspen said:


> Uploaded to Kobo yesterday, Smashwords approved my books for the Premium catalog today. Coincidental? So, I opted out of Kobo on SW.


Nah, another one of my titles was just rejected from SW premium distro.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Jnassise said:


> I don't think it is a bad as B&N's to be honest.


I can't compare with B&N, since they refuse to take my money


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Romi said:


> Thanks for the info, this is helpful!


YW.

One more thing to what I posted, in case someone says "why should I bother?" Well, I don't have a Kindle. I hate the Kindle reading app on my PC, my Vox, and my iPad. Hate hate hate (though not as much as I hate Sony's reader app). I prefer the Kobo app. I can buy from Kobo and put it on our Sony ereaders (we have 2), my kobo (1), and/or the iThingies (3 in total). If I see a book on Amazon, I will search for it first on Kobo. If it's there, I buy it (after all, I'm buying for 4 people in total and two of us are heavy readers).

If the book is not on Kobo, I'll check smashwords. If it's not there, I'll send a sample to the kindle app as a reminder. However, realistically, my buythru percentage is under 5%.

Having your book in many places helps a lot.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

We might remember Kobo is a branch of Rakuten. It's no longer on its own. Rakuten is about a $5 billion revenue company with a strong ecommerce presence in Asia. So we could say we are putting our books on Rakuten's Kobo, just like we put them on Amazon's Kindle. [Yes, I know Kobo is a subsidiary.]


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## MQ (Jan 5, 2011)

I've been trying to get SW to put up some of my titles on Kobo but they've been really slow.  Today I get an e-mail that they'll expedite their shipping.  Now I know why


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## Sybil Nelson (Jun 24, 2010)

I have 15 books that I now need to upload to Kobo and I'm dreading having to convert all of them to epub. I upload to B&N with an html file and it turns out nicely. Does anyone know if uploading a .doc file provides nice formatting?


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## Richardcrasta (Jul 29, 2010)

@Sybil: No, the doc file didn't work for me. treats para breaks as page breaks.

Question: Have most of you first taken your Smashwords books off before uploading directly to Kobo, or are you waiting for them to be taken off?


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## Sybil Nelson (Jun 24, 2010)

Richardcrasta said:


> @Sybil: No, the doc file didn't work for me. treats para breaks as page breaks.


Thanks


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

Sybil...

Kobo takes HTML to convert it for you as well.


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## CJArcher (Jan 22, 2011)

Richardcrasta said:


> Question: Have most of you first taken your Smashwords books off before uploading directly to Kobo, or are you waiting for them to be taken off?


I waited for mine to be taken off. I clicked the Opt Out option about a week ago on SW (maybe a bit more than that) and all except one was removed as of yesterday when I searched Kobo. The last one was gone by today, so all mine are now uploaded to Kobo direct. Ironically, that is the quickest response EVER for SW to update to Kobo.


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## ThatGurlthatlife (May 10, 2011)

Ok I've read through this thread and I have a quick question. Not sure if I overlooked it or not... I see where Kobo says they pay monthly.....ok...but is there a 2 month delay like KDP & BN. Or do they literally mean you get paid 'july' royalties at the end of July. (if you have over $100 in royalties of course). SN: Uploaded all my titles when I got the email yesterday and already had 2 sales. YAY!!!! I've never sold anything on Kobo through SW so I'm really excited about this! YAY!


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## Guest (Jul 18, 2012)

Yeah, I took mine off SW about six weeks ago.  For about a month, my rabid Canadian fans have been cruelly deprived. 

IIRC, the Kobo TOS say that payment is 45 days from the end of the month, so it's actually quicker than Amazon--if you can get over the $100 threshold (sorry, on the FAQ all I see is $100 or six months for payment, whichever comes first).


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## Jeroen Steenbeeke (Feb 3, 2012)

I find it sad to hear so many people are having problems converting to ePub, since it's basically just a ZIP file with HTML in it (and a bunch of metadata files to get the table of contents to work and such). You could probably make one by hand by following the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB and checking it online using http://validator.idpf.org/.

In my case it was simply a matter of re-uploading the EPUB I had already generated for Lulu, and now my book is available in five stores (and selling in none, yay!)


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## Kia Zi Shiru (Feb 7, 2011)

Sybil Nelson said:


> I have 15 books that I now need to upload to Kobo and I'm dreading having to convert all of them to epub. I upload to B&N with an html file and it turns out nicely. Does anyone know if uploading a .doc file provides nice formatting?


It kept messing up my .doc file, so I converted my html file to a .mobi and uploaded that. Worked like a charm.



Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Sybil...
> 
> Kobo takes HTML to convert it for you as well.


It didn't for me, it told me html was not supported, it also doesn't show under where you add the file that it will support it.

Mobi files went the best for me. I've never made an epub before so was glad it supported mobi.


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## theaatkinson (Sep 22, 2010)

maybe this is really silly of me, but why not just download the epub given by Smashwords and upload that file to kobo (assuming you're on SW in the first place)

am I missing something critical?


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## Kia Zi Shiru (Feb 7, 2011)

theaatkinson said:


> maybe this is really silly of me, but why not just download the epub given by Smashwords and upload that file to kobo (assuming you're on SW in the first place)
> 
> am I missing something critical?


Apart from the copyright smashwords thing in the book, I don't think a lot would be wrong with that.


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## TheSFReader (Jan 20, 2011)

theaatkinson said:


> maybe this is really silly of me, but why not just download the epub given by Smashwords and upload that file to kobo (assuming you're on SW in the first place)
> 
> am I missing something critical?


Yep, it's against Smashwords TOS. 


> 5. Formats of Digital Conversions. Author shall submit their Work as a Microsoft Word .doc file. Smashwords shall utilize its proprietary Meatgrinder technology to convert the book into multiple ebook formats, and publish the work for use in sampling, distributing and selling the work. *The author/publisher is not authorized to independently sell or distribute Smashwords-generated file conversions outside of the Smashwords site or Smashwords distribution network without first receiving written permission from Smashwords* (in other words, you cannot use Smashwords as a free file conversion service so you can sell the files elsewhere). You acknowledge that if you violate this requirement, you may forfeit any accrued earnings at Smashwords, and your account may be deleted without notification.


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## theaatkinson (Sep 22, 2010)

Ah! There ya go. makes perfect sense. Thanks THESFReader


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## amiblackwelder (Mar 19, 2010)

Sybil Nelson said:


> I have 15 books that I now need to upload to Kobo and I'm dreading having to convert all of them to epub. I upload to B&N with an html file and it turns out nicely. Does anyone know if uploading a .doc file provides nice formatting?


No .doc didn't work well for me either...I am having to reload and manage damage control to those who downloaded already..


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## Jan Strnad (May 27, 2010)

Won't Calibre give you an easy epub? 

Before I had a Kindle, I would buy books at Amazon and convert to epub for my Kobo, and it worked fine.


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## amiblackwelder (Mar 19, 2010)

theaatkinson said:


> Ah! There ya go. makes perfect sense. Thanks THESFReader


Also the smashwords version often doesn't look as nice as when you do the epub yourself. 
I've converted all my MAC .pages into .RTF and cleaned them up with spaces and such and am converting all .RTF to .DOC and .EPUB now to reload everywhere.

One problem I just found on kindle when I loaded my .RTF directly is that the font is much smaller and so customers have to enlarge the font just on my books compared to the competition...so fixing that now, but worth it because all the stores can use these improved .docs and .epubs now.


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## amiblackwelder (Mar 19, 2010)

I'm still not seeing my goodreads reviews on my kobo books. I took the iSBN kobo had and put it into my goodreads ISBN (taking Amazon's out) and that didn't work. Any suggestions to what I'm doing wrong?


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

Jan Strnad said:


> Won't Calibre give you an easy epub?
> 
> Before I had a Kindle, I would buy books at Amazon and convert to epub for my Kobo, and it worked fine.


This. For most people I suspect calibre is the best answer. Calibre is pretty much what we all wish the meatgrinder would be. Plus you can freely distribute the output. You can even start from a (shudder) Word document if you must--just save as RTF and then import into Calibre which will generate almost any format you could wish for.

For those starting from Word:

http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/conversion.html#convert-microsoft-word-documents

I have never used calibre on Word docs myself, but it gives very nice output from my HTML and allows you to specify as much CSS as you want to be able to control the look and feel. It can automagically build you a very nice table of contents as well, which is the part of manually building ePubs that I always dreaded.


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## Kia Zi Shiru (Feb 7, 2011)

amiblackwelder said:


> Also the smashwords version often doesn't look as nice as when you do the epub yourself.
> I've converted all my MAC .pages into .RTF and cleaned them up with spaces and such and am converting all .RTF to .DOC and .EPUB now to reload everywhere.
> 
> One problem I just found on kindle when I loaded my .RTF directly is that the font is much smaller and so customers have to enlarge the font just on my books compared to the competition...so fixing that now, but worth it because all the stores can use these improved .docs and .epubs now.


I wrote a blogpost about that problem, it also links to a possible fix:
http://kiaswriting.blogspot.nl/2012/07/how-to-format-your-project-kf8-proof.html


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## Victoria Champion (Jun 6, 2012)

I uploaded my ebook on the 16th to Kobo and it is still in _Publishing_ stage. Anyone else have this kind of delay?


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## Sybil Nelson (Jun 24, 2010)

Victoria Champion said:


> I uploaded my ebook on the 16th to Kobo and it is still in _Publishing_ stage. Anyone else have this kind of delay?


No, I uploaded mine last night and it went through today. But I took it down because it didn't look as nice as I wanted from a .doc file. I'll upload again with an .epub


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## 25803 (Oct 24, 2010)

This question may have already been covered, but I couldn't find it anywhere. I'm taking part in a special promo and setting one of my books free for a few days. Does Kobo generate any kind of a free downloads report?

I d/l a copy (to my Kobo iphone app) and it's not showing "sales." I'm just hoping at some point I'll learn how many free books are given away.

Thanks.


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## Guest (Jul 19, 2012)

For those of you who format your ebooks in .epub with Sigil, are you seeing any problems on kobo with your books?


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

Joe Vasicek said:


> For those of you who format your ebooks in .epub with Sigil, are you seeing any problems on kobo with your books?


Nope. I have one free book. I downloaded it and opened it in Sigil. Seemed exactly the same to me.

Feel free to check it out. It's not DRM protected. This is the link


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## Sara Fawkes (Apr 22, 2012)

Has anyone else noticed the dates within the Kobo dashboard not lining up? I only started receiving sales for "July 18" about four hours ago - I noticed it all day today my sales were going into the "July 17" column.  Any ideas?


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## Lanie Jordan (Feb 23, 2011)

Sara Fawkes said:


> Has anyone else noticed the dates within the Kobo dashboard not lining up? I only started receiving sales for "July 18" about four hours ago - I noticed it all day today my sales were going into the "July 17" column.  Any ideas?


I've had 0 sales there so far, so I'm not sure. But maybe because there were so many people uploading books, and hopefully selling, that there's a delay? It's a new system, so maybe they're still working out some kinks. (Best guess, and not a very educated one, sorry!)


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## Jason G. Anderson (Sep 29, 2010)

Nathan Elliott said:


> This. For most people I suspect calibre is the best answer. Calibre is pretty much what we all wish the meatgrinder would be. Plus you can freely distribute the output.


Agreed!

However, one thing to be aware of is that Calibre can sometimes create an epub file that doesn't pass validation (really frustrating). If that happens, the best thing to do is to use Sigil to go in an fix the problem (assuming you know enough HTML to get by).


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

I'll just stick with hiring you, Jason.


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## Guest (Jul 19, 2012)

If you use Open Office, there's a plugin called Writer2ePub that creates a wonderfully clean .epub file from any document that Open Office can read. I just tried it out today, and I'm extremely pleased with it. It's not perfect--I still do the cover and table of contents myself, in Sigil--but after figuring out what these tools can do, I swear I'm never going back to Calibre again (for publishing at least).


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## Jason G. Anderson (Sep 29, 2010)

Monique said:


> I'll just stick with hiring you, Jason.


LOL, thanks - I won't complain!


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## Steve Vernon (Feb 18, 2011)

I actually played a small part in the Kobo Beta Test. I have released one young adult novel through the Kobo program and am just putting the finishing touches on a second Kobo release.

What I can tell you is that Kobo is a breeze to use and I have been very happy with the results.

I haven't been talking much about it here at Kindleboards because I wasn't sure if that would go over to well. A little like talking Protestant in a confessional booth. 

My latest Kobo blog.
http://stevevernonstoryteller.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/kobo-writing-life/


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## Steve Vernon (Feb 18, 2011)

Okay. So I just stomped right through this entire thread. Wow! What a great response. And big kudoes to Joe Nasisse for being right on top of things and acting as a go-between answer-dude. Nicely done, Joe.

I don't have much to add to all that's been said - but I will add this. I saw quite a few Australian writers in the thread asking questions. I want to refer them to an Australian writer's blog which might give them some key Australia-relate Kobo-type tips.

http://digireado.wordpress.com/2012/07/17/launch-of-kobo-writing-life-self-publishing-platform/

I hope that helps some.


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## theaatkinson (Sep 22, 2010)

I thought I'd test out how quickly Kobo will set to free after it's been uploaded with a set price. Yesterday, I loaded Formed of Clay and set it to 2.99. It published within hours. Like....2. and this morning, i set it to free, and within moments it showed as free and i can STILL go to my Dashboard and make changes. i could set it back to 2.99 if I wanted...wow.

but it's free for now, so if you have kobo and wanna grab it, go ahead. grin.

http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Formed-of-Clay-novella/book-SE6lIDn00kyBGMZDNNcb_A/page1.html?s=nBIH94DxsUi5bTSBXU9bBA&r=3


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

Jason G. Anderson said:


> Agreed!
> 
> However, one thing to be aware of is that Calibre can sometimes create an epub file that doesn't pass validation (really frustrating). If that happens, the best thing to do is to use Sigil to go in an fix the problem (assuming you know enough HTML to get by).


Oh yes, I forgot about that--this is a great point, especially for people who want to upload to Apple. If you are talking about the same issues I encounter, it is actually not the fault of Calibre but rather ironically the fault of ePubChecker or whatever it is called not correctly following the ePub standard during validation. But to the user it doesn't really matter whose fault it is. If you want to upload to Apple, you will need it to pass through the bug-ridden validator and that can be a pain. I just avoid Apple b/c I am tried of trying to deal with them for other reasons. Calibre works fine for me for Kindle, BN, and Kobo. I don't think these places use the ePubChecker (well, Amazon doesn't use ePub at all...). For people who do want to use Calibre with Apple, there are some command line options that try to break the standard just enough to pass the validator. Never tried them myself. These things are a low priority for the calibre folks, and rightly so. Apple should get their own act together.


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## Jason G. Anderson (Sep 29, 2010)

Nathan Elliott said:


> Oh yes, I forgot about that--this is a great point, especially for people who want to upload to Apple. If you are talking about the same issues I encounter, it is actually not the fault of Calibre but rather ironically the fault of ePubChecker or whatever it is called not correctly following the ePub standard during validation.


To be honest, I'm not sure if the problem is ePubChecker not following the standard, or Calibre - I haven't dug that deep. I do know Calibre changes my HTML, and ePubChecker doesn't like the change. But once I undo the change in Sigil, it's happy. A minor thing, but annoying


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

A short time after my books went live on Kobo I had my first sale. Probably sheer coincidence and luck.

I wonder if people who are already on Kobo through Smashwords can give us an idea what kind of sales they have compared to Amazon.

Will Kobo itself gain more visibility (and generate more sales) now that a lot of indies are joining up?


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## Jana DeLeon (Jan 20, 2011)

Andrew Ashling said:


> I wonder if people who are already on Kobo through Smashwords can give us an idea what kind of sales they have compared to Amazon.


In the last six months, Kobo has been 1-3% of my Amazon sales.


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## WilliamEsmont (May 3, 2010)

Over the course of 18 months and 25K sales, I can attribute maybe a dozen sales to Kobo. I started and stopped distribution several times due to a KDP Select term and I also had chronic issues with my covers, prices, and descriptions getting out of sync with Smash. I imagine if I had sucked it up and maintained a steady presence there, the number could be higher.


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

Jason G. Anderson said:


> To be honest, I'm not sure if the problem is ePubChecker not following the standard, or Calibre - I haven't dug that deep. I do know Calibre changes my HTML, and ePubChecker doesn't like the change. But once I undo the change in Sigil, it's happy. A minor thing, but annoying


Okay, I am not sure that is the same thing, then. In my case it was not the actual HTML but rather some issues with meta data like date formats and totally stupid trivial stuff. Perhaps if Sigil updates the modification time or "corrects" the meta data to please the checker when it saves the file, it might just be the simple act of opening and re-saving that helps you. But it could be totally different issues. If your errors are definitely related to specific changes in the HTML then we have different problems, and yours could well be calibre's fault for all I know. The ePubs display fine, so I am happy. But like I say, I don't use Apple.


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

Thanks Jana and William.

A dozen sales over eighteen months… Does this mean I can look forward to a second sale (maybe) by the end of August?


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## Jana DeLeon (Jan 20, 2011)

Andrew Ashling said:


> Thanks Jana and William.
> 
> A dozen sales over eighteen months&#8230; Does this mean I can look froward to a second sale (maybe) by the end of August?


LOL Let's hope it's long before then! It's not the biggest market, but every little bit adds up. And if you have a book "hit" then it can give you a spike. Plus, Kobo distributes to a ton of countries, so it offers a large range of potential.


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## WilliamEsmont (May 3, 2010)

Andrew Ashling said:


> Thanks Jana and William.
> 
> A dozen sales over eighteen months&#8230; Does this mean I can look forward to a second sale (maybe) by the end of August?


Kobo's parent company has very deep pockets and I believe the potential with them is huge. Plus, now that we're not reliant upon a middleman to get our work distributed there, things can only get better. That said, my Kobo dashboard still shows a big, fat goose egg


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

WilliamEsmont said:


> Kobo's parent company has very deep pockets and I believe the potential with them is huge. Plus, now that we're not reliant upon a middleman to get our work distributed there, things can only get better. That said, my Kobo dashboard still shows a big, fat goose egg


Frankly, I just needed an outlet where I could publish my books in epub. My Amazon-files are non-DRM, so it's fairly easy to convert them back to epub, but a lot of the formatting gets lost in the conversion. E.g. I use a fancy font for the chapters. Not essential, I know, but people with an epub device who buy the books from Kobo now get to _see_ them. 

I hope to attract readers with epub-devices who don't want to go through the hassle of having to convert books themselves. Now I just have to find them.


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## Pnjw (Apr 24, 2011)

In the past year, I sold 15 books on Kobo. In contrast, I've sold over 20K books over all. 

I just got my first sale through Kobo Writing Life. Their search function and genre lists leave a lot to be desired. For example they don't have a paranormal romance list at all. Under romance it's contemporary, historical, and adult. They're worse than B&N if that is possible. I don't even see a place to add keywords. Hopefully the new infusion of cash will mean an upgrade in functionality. Still, I'm happy to be able to go direct. They had an old cover up for ages that I could never get changed. Now changes are instantaneous.


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## Steve Vernon (Feb 18, 2011)

Comparatively, I sell about 10 Kindle to every 1 Kobo sale - so far. But I figure if they are putting all of this effort into creating this new platform then they are undoubtedly going to put some effort into stirring up business. Mind you, we authors are still going to have to put in our usual share of self-promotion - but I feel that I can safely say that it would be a mistake to judge Kobo tomorrow by results that you have accrued in Kobo past.

Kobo past?

Kobo future?

Shoot, sounds like a darned Twilight Zone episode.

You have now entered the Kobo Zone...


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## CJArcher (Jan 22, 2011)

According to my spreadsheet, Kobo has accounted for 0.7% of my sales this year. I'm hoping things will pick up now that I have the opportunity to discount or go free. Until their browsing and searching functionality improves, I can't see any other way to get noticed over there.


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## Jason G. Anderson (Sep 29, 2010)

For any Australian authors who (like me) were wondering about direct deposits in Australia, and where you should put the BSB, I've heard back from Kobo:



> Hi Jason,
> 
> You can enter your banks's BSB number in the IBAN field, although it is entirely optional and is not required to receive payment.
> 
> ...


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## Pnjw (Apr 24, 2011)

Sara Fawkes said:


> Has anyone else noticed the dates within the Kobo dashboard not lining up? I only started receiving sales for "July 18" about four hours ago - I noticed it all day today my sales were going into the "July 17" column.  Any ideas?


Hi Sara,
Yes, I'm seeing this today. I've had a handful of sales show up today (the 19th), all under the 18th.


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## ThatGurlthatlife (May 10, 2011)

yup same for me. I guess kobo is a day behind. 7 sales today showed up but for yesterday.  I'm not a habitual sales checker anyways...so I guess once Kobo catches up with all the new authors submitting then the system will too! Through smashwords I've had 0 sales through kobo over the last year. In the last two days 7!!!! I am looking forward to what kobo will do for it's authors and what it will mean for my bank account in the long run.  I'm excited


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## MackM (Jan 17, 2012)

Sorry if this has been addressed in this thread already, but where can I download the Kobo previewer to make sure my conversion went through okay?

Thanks!


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## Guest (Jul 20, 2012)

Quote:

*". . . if it's a lock that still let's the thieves in but the honest man out, I'll just leave the lock off . . ."*

By the same reasoning, if you leave your car unlocked at the mall, a car thief doesn't have to waste time fiddling with burglary tools.

I always lock my garage at night. My neighbors don't feel insulted.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

MackM said:


> Sorry if this has been addressed in this thread already, but where can I download the Kobo previewer to make sure my conversion went through okay?
> 
> Thanks!


http://www.kobobooks.com/apps

You can also use Adobe Digital Editions, too.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Since I use Kobo a lot, I thought I'd share some new things that I'm seeing.

First, the recommended email has not changed for me. I still get the same kinds of trad recommendations - again, I think that's because I am a heavy trad purchaser. 

There is a new feature on the book pages that suggest other books. Now, I'm not sure if these are related to the book I'm looking at, or my own purchases, or a combination. These recommendations, I admit, are all over the place. However, they are new and it's a good direction.

The new releases and whatnot are still pretty much all trad novels. Hugh has the omnibus in there and they have been promoting it heavily (it's been recommended to me about 7 times in the last 20 pages I've looked at on Kobo to write this post). The only other book being that heavily promoted is 50 Shades of Grey.

Great Reads under $4.99 is heavily trad. Perhaps moreso than before. *boggle*

The Short Reads section is heavily American-centric with heavy American publisher focus. Most of the listing is actually blocked from me, due to geographical restrictions by publishers (however, when I change my IP to pretend it's in the US, I can see a lot more. )

I hope that helps.


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## Richardcrasta (Jul 29, 2010)

Followup question to any of the generous and extremely knowledgeable computer experts who have been sharing their knowledge in this thread:

Rather than upload my doc converted html file to mobipocket, create a mobi file, and then upload that to Kobo, 
why not:
Upload my file directly to KDP, then take their preview file (which is a mobi), and then upload that to Kobo? 

The reason: I find that KDP recognizes my Table of Contents and Start Fields, and gives a complete table of contents exactly as I have it set up in my doc file (then saved as html): chapter titles in the TOC hyperlinked to bookmarked chapter headings. Whereas Mobipocket Creator requires extra steps. In other words, Amazon's own mobipocket creator is more effective than the one that is free.

Has anyone tried this, or found a problem with it?

thanks!


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

Richardcrasta said:


> Followup question to any of the generous and extremely knowledgeable computer experts who have been sharing their knowledge in this thread:
> 
> Rather than upload my doc converted html file to mobipocket, create a mobi file, and then upload that to Kobo,
> why not:
> ...


Interesting idea. Assuming that Kobo can successfully convert the mobi into an ePub that works as desired (they probably can), I see no technological problem with this. You might want to check, though, whether it violates KDP's terms of service to upload a mobi file that is generated by them to other stores. I think (I'm not a lawyer) that there is no copyright issue from this kind of thing b/c HTML formatting and markup and so on are not protected by copyright. I believe that the output from a converter would not be protected either. But it could still be against the TOS at Amazon like it is at Smashwords for example. In my opinion it would not be unreasonable for them to forbid such a thing in their TOS.

If you decide not to do it using KDP's mobi file, you can use calibre (free, open source program) to do this. It can be taught to recognize chapters and sections and can build you a nice TOC automatically. It might even do it right by default, but I have never fed a Word doc into it. Certainly if you export your doc to HTML and chapter headers into h1 or h2 tags, then calibre will probably nail it on the first try just using the default behavior.


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## theaatkinson (Sep 22, 2010)

has anyone tried this online converter?

http://ebook.online-convert.com/convert-to-mobi


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## Jnassise (Mar 22, 2010)

In the two months that I've been in the beta program, my Kobo sales have expanded to become 25% of my overall sales.  Perhaps most surprising to me is that the vast majority of them are of an omnibus volume that sells for $12.95.  Sales have primarily been in Canada, with a small percentage of them coming from Australia, New Zealand and the UK.


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## Pnjw (Apr 24, 2011)

Interesting, Joseph. so far all of my sales have been my two book collection, despite book one being free. Meaning if they downloaded book one and bought book two it would be cheaper than the two book bundle.


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## Kia Zi Shiru (Feb 7, 2011)

I'm curious, does Kobo show it when you have sales that are from free books?


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## Pnjw (Apr 24, 2011)

kiazishiru said:


> I'm curious, does Kobo show it when you have sales that are from free books?


I don't think so. I downloaded mine and it didn't show up on my sales page.


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## theaatkinson (Sep 22, 2010)

I don't think so either, although it would be lovely since you can't really tell anything from the sales rank they show. that's a wash, that one. the ranks are weird. I have two books for free right now and I'm sure there's been at least one download, but nothing on the dashboard. shame. would love to see that.


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## Kia Zi Shiru (Feb 7, 2011)

theaatkinson said:


> I don't think so either, although it would be lovely since you can't really tell anything from the sales rank they show. that's a wash, that one. the ranks are weird. I have two books for free right now and I'm sure there's been at least one download, but nothing on the dashboard. shame. would love to see that.


Yeah, I also got myself a copy of my own book that I put up for free today, but it is not showing any sales.

Also slightly annoyed that I've mailed them on day 1 and haven't gotten an answer back about how to solve my pricing issue... I know they are busy, but when I see emails pop up in this thread that have been send after mine but are answered I'm kind of annoyed. They could at least just tell me that they can't do anything about it at this moment or something...


----------



## Victoria Champion (Jun 6, 2012)

kiazishiru said:


> Also slightly annoyed that I've mailed them on day 1 and haven't gotten an answer back about how to solve my pricing issue... I know they are busy, but when I see emails pop up in this thread that have been send after mine but are answered I'm kind of annoyed. They could at least just tell me that they can't do anything about it at this moment or something...


I sent an email yesterday about my ebook being stuck in Publishing mode since launch day (the 16th) (and no way to delist it and resubmit) and I got a generic response saying we received your email, but so far no other communication.


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## Jnassise (Mar 22, 2010)

Based on some prior conversations I've had, I know that Kobo is working on more robust reporting tools that will launch in the near future.  The current Dashboard will not be the only reporting feature available.  So I'm guessing they will deal with the reporting of free books in that update.

-Joe


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## Kia Zi Shiru (Feb 7, 2011)

Thanks Joe  that is great news


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## MackM (Jan 17, 2012)

Krista D. Ball said:


> http://www.kobobooks.com/apps
> 
> You can also use Adobe Digital Editions, too.


Thanks! Now if only I could figure out how to get the book to upload properly! I tried a handful of times and the font looks like dingbats every time. Is anyone else having this problem?


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

Strange.
A few hours after uploading my books to Kobo five days ago I had one lucky sale.
That book is now #1 on "Fiction & Literature > Fiction > Gay," both ordered by "Bestsellers" & "Top Matches."
My dashboard still shows one sale.
Does anyone know how that's possible?


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Andrew Ashling said:


> Strange.
> A few hours after uploading my books to Kobo five days ago I had one lucky sale.
> That book is now #1 on "Fiction & Literature > Fiction > Gay," both ordered by "Bestsellers" & "Top Matches."
> My dashboard still shows one sale.
> Does anyone know how that's possible?


What country are you located?

ETA: I'm in Canada and I see all of your books as: #2153 in Fiction & Literature > Fiction > Gay


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

Krista D. Ball said:


> What country are you located?
> 
> ETA: I'm in Canada and I see all of your books as: #2153 in Fiction & Literature > Fiction > Gay


I'm in Belgium, Europe.

I see this on the book page, next to the cover:

#6 in Sci Fi & Fantasy > Fantasy > Epic
#3 in Romance > Historical
#1 in Fiction & Literature > Fiction > Gay


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## NicoleSwan (Oct 2, 2011)

So profoundly glad that Kobo is now here, finally an escape from SW. *hugs kobo*


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## Robert A Michael (Apr 30, 2012)

I posted mine yesterday. Still no sales, but it is ranked #17 in Religion & Spirituality>Christianity>Christian Literature.  I looked, and evidently, there are 133 other books in that category with ZERO sales, because mine was at 140 out of 140.  

Another funny thing:  I also uploaded to Lulu to take advantage of their distribution to Apple and B & N.  However, I have not seen my book for sale on
either Apple or B & N yet.  It has been over 36 hours since I published.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Andrew Ashling said:


> I'm in Belgium, Europe.
> 
> I see this on the book page, next to the cover:
> 
> ...


That means there are a lot less books available for Belgium, then in Canada. If everyone from a different country posted the ranking of your book, you'd see that each country would have a different ranking.


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

Krista D. Ball said:


> That means there are a lot less books available for Belgium, then in Canada. If everyone from a different country posted the ranking of your book, you'd see that each country would have a different ranking.


Thanks. That would explain it.
For "Gay" I see 6,176 books.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

The others might not have had another sale that day, or lately, so that would been enough to bump you to the top.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

I'm in Germany and I get the following rankings for your book:

    #60 in Sci Fi & Fantasy > Fantasy > Epic
    #152 in Romance > Historical
    #75 in Fiction & Literature > Fiction > Gay

So it obviously depends on your location.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Robert A Michael said:


> Another funny thing: I also uploaded to Lulu to take advantage of their distribution to Apple and B & N. However, I have not seen my book for sale on either Apple or B & N yet. It has been over 36 hours since I published.


You might want to consider going in to Apple and B&N via Smashwords. They pay better royalties and have a quicker distribution to both stores.


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## Zelah Meyer (Jun 15, 2011)

My plan was to go via Smashwords unless I was selling enough via Kobo to make a switch worthwhile.  However, although it shipped 6 days ago, it hasn't gone live on Kobo yet.  If it still isn't live by the time I get my next story ready for publication then I may pull it and go direct.  It's a shame for Smashwords, because it looks as if they've done what they need to at their end of things.  However, if Kobo are prioritising the uploading of titles submitted directly, then it would make sense for me to go that route.  Hopefully it will turn up on there soon though.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Zelah Meyer said:


> My plan was to go via Smashwords unless I was selling enough via Kobo to make a switch worthwhile. However, although it shipped 6 days ago, it hasn't gone live on Kobo yet. If it still isn't live by the time I get my next story ready for publication then I may pull it and go direct. It's a shame for Smashwords, because it looks as if they've done what they need to at their end of things. However, if Kobo are prioritising the uploading of titles submitted directly, then it would make sense for me to go that route. Hopefully it will turn up on there soon though.


Yeah, I've been waiting a month for one title. On the plus side, it's getting better. The connection between Smashwords and Apple is now lightning fast. Stuff publishes/prices change within an hour or so. Really quick. I think they are working on doing something similar with B&N at the moment, and I would imagine Kobo would be next. And, in a few months, we'll be able to upload our own files to Smashwords and sidestep the meatgrinder.


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

CoraBuhlert said:


> I'm in Germany and I get the following rankings for your book:
> 
> #60 in Sci Fi & Fantasy > Fantasy > Epic
> #152 in Romance > Historical
> ...


Thanks.

Or it may depend on _who_ is looking&#8230;


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## Lisa J. Yarde (Jul 15, 2010)

One feature I know I'll love is the notification regarding sales - since KDP indicates the previous week's sales on Sunday, I've taken to checking mine at that time. Glad to see Kobo will send notification like Createspace. Also love the info on sales by geographic location. 

Only thing that puzzles me is how readers can find the titles. Search feature is still inconsistent - titles show sometimes. Just typing in my name gets every author named Lisa (and some that aren't), but if I use quotes, I'll find all my titles. Do Kobo customers know to use quotes?

Two years of going through Smashwords for Kobo sales netted me five whopping sales, so I don't have high expectations for reaching the $100 threshold soon. Still, working directly with Kobo seems the better solution for me with quicker reporting and ability to alter pricing.


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

I uploaded my titles this afternoon. It look longer to change all the links and turn the titles into epubs than it did to upload them all. Very fast process. 

I'm in big fat awe at the lack of a place to enter keywords or tags. And though I entered the subtitles in the subtitle slot, they show nowhere on the book's page. WT? So I'll be going back in and adding the subtitles to the titles, to ensure that they do show up. Why have a slot for subtitle and not put that anywhere?

Before I was finished, a few were already live. And 2/3 of them are available a couple of hours later. That's zippy.


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## FictionalWriter (Aug 4, 2010)

6 8 books sold since Kobo sent notification to take down my books coming from Smashwords. I do hope business picks up.


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## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

Victoria Champion said:


> I sent an email yesterday about my ebook being stuck in Publishing mode since launch day (the 16th) (and no way to delist it and resubmit) and I got a generic response saying we received your email, but so far no other communication.


I had 19 go up and 4 got stuck. I re-uploaded the stuck ones, and two subsequently unstuck themselves. Still have 2 stuck in Publishing.

You can upload the contents again even if it's stuck in publishing. You can't click Publish at the end though, so I have no idea whether I achieved anything.


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## D.A. Boulter (Jun 11, 2010)

I finally sold something on Kobo -- two books in fact. To someone in Norway. Takk skal De ha! My drought is over. Don't know how they found my books though. The Kobo search engine ... yikes! I have trouble finding my books, and I know the titles.


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## jewishwriter (May 13, 2011)

I sent a question to Kobo regarding ISBN's etc. the day after Writing Life went into operation, and received a ticket notification. Have yet to receive a response. Judging from postings here, seems as though books uploaded to Kobo via smashwords will have to be taken down?


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## Victoria Champion (Jun 6, 2012)

Simon Haynes said:


> I had 19 go up and 4 got stuck. I re-uploaded the stuck ones, and two subsequently unstuck themselves. Still have 2 stuck in Publishing.
> 
> You can upload the contents again even if it's stuck in publishing. You can't click Publish at the end though, so I have no idea whether I achieved anything.


My ebook has been stuck in Publishing since I uploaded it on the 16th (KWL launch day). I cannot find any way to re-upload or cancel the process. Can you explain?


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## Todd Russell (Mar 27, 2011)

Thanks to the OP for the head's up. I was supposed to get an email notification (?) but must have missed it. Did anybody else get one?


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

Todd Russell said:


> Thanks to the OP for the head's up. I was supposed to get an email notification (?) but must have missed it. Did anybody else get one?


Most of us, I think. It was just an invitation to join up and a link: http://writinglife.kobobooks.com/


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

It has taken about a week, but finally my Goodreads ratings are showing up on Kobo.  

For those who haven't done so already: it pays to change your ASIN to the ISBN Kobo gave your books on Goodreads, though it may take a while before your ratings show up.


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

Has anyone been able to get stuck books unstuck? Three of mine stuck during the publishing process and still say "Publishing." It says not to contact them until 72 hours have passed. I uploaded Sunday afternoon, so I guess I'll email tomorrow morning if need be.

I was hoping someone else had figured out the magic incantation by now so I wouldn't have to email and wait for support.  Anybody? Bueller?

I thought about trying again, just putting those three up from scratch to see if they'd go through. If that worked, I could just email and ask them to delete the three stuck ones.


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## mckat (May 4, 2012)

[Deleted because I disagree with the new terms of service.]


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Sorry, no, mine uploaded without hitch.

Bumping so you can get answer...


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

giablue said:


> [email protected] NONE.


That's because that is not the help email. Use [email protected] and identity yourself as a Writing Life author. You'll be moved to the right department.


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

Krista D. Ball said:


> That's because that is not the help email.


According to Kobo, it is. It says to email [email protected] if your book takes more than 72 hours to publish, right on the page where you actually make the final clicks to publish the thing.

It's worth trying the [email protected] address, but Gia correctly the used the one _they_ give for that purpose.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

/shrug When you look at the help file, it says to email help  That's who I've emailed with things.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

72 hours (3 days) isn't too bad considering what kind of influx they've probably gotten in the last week.


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## mckat (May 4, 2012)

[Deleted because I disagree with the new terms of service.]


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## Victoria Champion (Jun 6, 2012)

giablue said:


> Just an update... I have emailed (and heard back from) another individual within kobo who isn't related to "support". I don't have permission to share his email, so I can't do that, BUT he looked at two of my epub files and confirmed that there wasn't anything "wrong" with them. He also stated that support/tech has seen a pattern to the stuck books and they believe they will have a fix for it in 24 hours or so.
> 
> One thing he did state was:
> 
> ...


Thanks for the info, giablue.


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## Kia Zi Shiru (Feb 7, 2011)

Hmmm, how long does it take for the Goodreads ratings to show up on Kobo when you link the two? I just got my first rating and hope that it might give me slightly more exposure when they also show up on the kobo site.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

kiazishiru said:


> Hmmm, how long does it take for the Goodreads ratings to show up on Kobo when you link the two? I just got my first rating and hope that it might give me slightly more exposure when they also show up on the kobo site.


some of mine were near-instant. Others were days.


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

kiazishiru said:


> Hmmm, how long does it take for the Goodreads ratings to show up on Kobo when you link the two? I just got my first rating and hope that it might give me slightly more exposure when they also show up on the kobo site.


I checked your Goodreads book page. They won't show up, because you still have the ASIN in the description of your book. If you want the GR ratings to show up on Kobo you need to change that to the ISBN Kobo gave your book.
For me it took about a week after I'd done that.


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## Victoria Champion (Jun 6, 2012)

Andrew Ashling said:


> I checked your Goodreads book page. They won't show up, because you still have the ASIN in the description of your book. If you want the GR ratings to show up on Kobo you need to change that to the ISBN Kobo gave your book.
> For me it took about a week after I'd done that.


And there is no risk of losing the book status on people's shelves and our ratings if we change this at Goodreads?


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

Victoria Champion said:


> And there is no risk of losing the book status on people's shelves and our ratings if we change this at Goodreads?


Not that I'm aware of. Goodreads uses its own internal number to identify the book.


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## Kia Zi Shiru (Feb 7, 2011)

Andrew Ashling said:


> I checked your Goodreads book page. They won't show up, because you still have the ASIN in the description of your book. If you want the GR ratings to show up on Kobo you need to change that to the ISBN Kobo gave your book.
> For me it took about a week after I'd done that.


I have two editions, one is my kindle edition (which seems to be the main edition too) but since I made a mistake when creating my book page I have two of them. The kobo edition is linked to the other edition on the page, so it should be fine.


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## Saul Tanpepper (Feb 16, 2012)

Victoria Champion said:


> And there is no risk of losing the book status on people's shelves and our ratings if we change this at Goodreads?


If you want to be certain, make another edition of the book with the Kobo ISBN and then combine the editions. Took mine about 4-5 days before the ratings showed up.

Uploaded another title today. Took about 2 hours to show published, but then another hour or so before I could find it.


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

Victoria Champion said:


> I have been asking for this solution in this thread since the 16th (KWL launch day)! I am trying it now to see if it will work. I emailed them 72 hours later (on the 19th) and I still have not gotten any response other than a bot saying they received my email.


I tried it this morning with my 3 stuck ones. Two unstuck and went up very quickly. In fact, my dashboard showed them added to the number long before they showed up as published under the eBooks tab. The third stayed stuck, so I changed the file names again and retried it. No luck. Maybe the third time is the charm. If not, I'll email. Then again, with the post here that they're working on the problem, I might just wait and see if it gets resolved.


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## DRMarvello (Dec 3, 2011)

Yikes! Sounds like KWL went out of beta way too soon. Glad I checked this thread. I'm out of Select now, but may wait until Kobo gets their act together to give KWL a try. Thanks all.


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## NS (Jul 8, 2011)

Victoria Champion said:


> My ebook has been stuck in Publishing since I uploaded it on the 16th (KWL launch day). I cannot find any way to re-upload or cancel the process. Can you explain?


That happened to me with my book and when I accidentally pointed my cursor to the book on my dashboard it had offered me to "publish" it. I clicked that and the book was up. I just didn't finish the process.


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## JennyJ (Jul 20, 2011)

Is everyone just doing epubs with Kobo or has anyone started having success using MS doc's? I know earlier in the thread peeps were having trouble with doc's.


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## Saul Tanpepper (Feb 16, 2012)

Shirl Anders said:


> Is everyone just doing epubs with Kobo or has anyone started having success using MS doc's? I know earlier in the thread peeps were having trouble with doc's.


I've done two from word .doc files and both look fine. One is short w/o fancy formatting and no ToC, the other long w/multiple sections and a ToC. Other than a line space after each paragraph in the long file, no probs with either. No metadata, though, so that may be the difference.


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## vrabinec (May 19, 2011)

Anne Frasier said:


> i might be wrong because my eyes were crossing reading the fine print, but it looked like 1.99 and up earns 70%. Am I right? Wrong?


Now they just have to go 80% for anything $5.99 and over.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Update

I sent an email to Kobo with the issue of my trad books and my self-pub books not being linked in any meaningful manner. This is my reply back:

Hi Krista,



> We are very sorry that it has taken us such a long time to address your query. Thank you for your interest in Kobo Writing Life.
> 
> I just tried searching for your name on our site and experienced the same problem. This is an issue with our general search functionality, which is being addressed by our web team. Your books can be found on our site by searching for their titles. We apologise for any inconvenience.
> 
> ...


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## Jnassise (Mar 22, 2010)

Krista,

When I do a search under my name, both my indie books and my trad books come up in the same search results.  Are you saying that's not happening with you?

-Joe


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Jnassise said:


> Krista,
> 
> When I do a search under my name, both my indie books and my trad books come up in the same search results. Are you saying that's not happening with you?
> 
> -Joe


*nod*

Krista D. Ball is -- http://www.kobobooks.com/search/search.html?q=%22Krista+D.+Ball%22

Yet, Tranquility's Blaze doesn't list (even though it's there): http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Tranquilitys-Blaze/book-K-cfYYFyZ0-ziBDlT9ltpg/page1.html?s=4rzP8xGYCUeO61IkZLeKNA&r=1

etc.


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## J. Tanner (Aug 22, 2011)

The exact match for "Krista D. Ball" is failing because it's "Ball, Krista D." for Blaze. Lame, but understandable given how "n" is interpreted for search. Can the publisher update the metadata for you?


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

J. Tanner said:


> The exact match for "Krista D. Ball" is failing because it's "Ball, Krista D." for Blaze. Lame, but understandable given how "n" is interpreted for search. Can the publisher update the metadata for you?


They weren't the ones who put the metadata in; Lightening Source was.


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## Jnassise (Mar 22, 2010)

J. Tanner said:


> Lame, but understandable given how "n" is interpreted for search. ?


J - Can you explain what you mean by that?

-Joe


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## J. Tanner (Aug 22, 2011)

Jnassise said:


> J - Can you explain what you mean by that?


Sorry, perhaps got too nerdy. In short, if you put a search term within quotes for the standard search function, it looks for an exact, and that means _exact_ match of those characters in order.

It appears their algorithm has a tiny bit of extended functionality in that it'll skip punctuation (so "Krista D Ball" = "Krista D. Ball") or bypass an obvious middle initial (so "Krista Ball" = "Krista D. Ball") but it won't reverse the word order (so "Krista Ball" NOT= "Ball, Krista").

If you leave out the quotes, then you get away from the _exact_ nature of the search but Kobo has terrible relevence sorting. A search for (no quotes) Krista D. Ball (no quotes) should really top the list with first, Krista D. Ball, then Ball, Krista D but it doesn't--it finds Cliff Ball to be most relevent and doesn't get to Krista until page 2. So you get a nonsense ordering that causes Krista and others to fall back to using the quotes for an exact match (which fails further and less obviously as shown.)

That make sense?

(@Krista: Bummer.)


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## Jnassise (Mar 22, 2010)

Perfect sense,  Just didn't realize that was what you meant when you used "n".  I was thinking N rather than "n".  (Now I hope that made sense!)

Thanks.
Joe


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

FYI for those with stuck books. As I mentioned up thread, 3 of mine stuck in the publishing process. The rest went up within minutes. Yesterday, I changed the file names for the cover images and epubs and tried again. The publish button at the end was never clickable, but I went through the rest of the process. Two unstuck immediately. 

I tried twice more with the final stuck book, renaming both cover and epub files. No go. I tried it again earlier today--I used a cover imagine in a different size, different name for it and the epub, and I changed a word in the book's description. It didn't work, or at least nothing had happened for several hours after that. 

I just checked, probably 12 hours after I did this, and it's up. I have no idea if Kobo has suddenly fixed their stuck-book problem or if the changes I made unstuck this one, finally. Check to see if your books have unstuck--maybe the news will be good. 

For the record, I hadn't emailed them yet. Try renaming files, changing a word in your description, maybe even making a copy of your cover that's slightly bigger or smaller than the one you originally used. It can't hurt to try it while you're waiting for a response/fix. 

Shelley


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## Victoria Champion (Jun 6, 2012)

shelleyo1 said:


> FYI for those with stuck books. As I mentioned up thread, 3 of mine stuck in the publishing process. The rest went up within minutes. Yesterday, I changed the file names for the cover images and epubs and tried again. The publish button at the end was never clickable, but I went through the rest of the process. Two unstuck immediately.
> 
> I tried twice more with the final stuck book, renaming both cover and epub files. No go. I tried it again earlier today--I used a cover imagine in a different size, different name for it and the epub, and I changed a word in the book's description. It didn't work, or at least nothing had happened for several hours after that.
> 
> ...


Yeah, I tried changing the cover and then re-uploading the ebook file, and it is still stuck in Publishing. I will try your other suggestions, thanks.


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

Victoria Champion said:


> Yeah, I tried changing the cover and then re-uploading the ebook file, and it is still stuck in Publishing. I will try your other suggestions, thanks.


Eh, I was hoping to hear Kobo had just fixed the problem and all the unstuck books came unstuck. :/

New cover and epub file names and a change in the description (and my cover image was a slightly difference size, but I'm not sure if it matters), and hopefully it'll unstick 'em. If not, I'd wait about 12 hours and do it all again. At least it doesn't take long to try.

I've sold one copy of one book since Sunday night, so I figure at least it's not like having stuck books cost me a lot of money. 

Here's hoping it works for you soon!


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

I just uploaded my first book to Kobo Writing Life. (The only one out of Select right now). I guess I should enjoy this time now ... before I have another stats screen to obsessively check. HOO HOO.


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## Jnassise (Mar 22, 2010)

> Yikes! Sounds like KWL went out of beta way too soon.


I would hardly call a handful of stuck books out of the thousands they have properly uploaded in the last week "coming out of beta way too soon."

They've been quite responsive and have handled several major tasks with both efficiency and aplomb from my viewpoint. I wouldn't be afraid to give them a try at all.

As to the issue at hand, based on what I've heard from some folks on the inside they've solved one of the reasons why some books get stuck already and hope to have the other reason they've identified corrected in the near future.


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## Saul Tanpepper (Feb 16, 2012)

Jnassise said:


> I would hardly call a handful of stuck books out of the thousands they have properly uploaded in the last week "coming out of beta way too soon."
> 
> They've been quite responsive and have handled several major tasks with both efficiency and aplomb from my viewpoint. I wouldn't be afraid to give them a try at all.
> 
> As to the issue at hand, based on what I've heard from some folks on the inside they've solved one of the reasons why some books get stuck already and hope to have the other reason they've identified corrected in the near future.


Agreed. Ammy had issues too coming out of the starting gates. We've come to expect that kind of efficiency (although some would argue...), which might be a bit unfair. I know it's incredibly frustrating for those having problems, especially seeing how smooth sailing seems to be for others.

Thanks, @jnassise, for all you've done.


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## Jnassise (Mar 22, 2010)

Victoria Champion said:


> Your statement that they have been 'quite responsive' is far from the reality of the situation.
> 
> I am out of ideas, and the way I feel about it right now is that KWL leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I don't know if I even want to list with them anymore.


I would respectuflly disagree, Victoria. You and a handle of others have not gotten your issues resolved but that does not make your experience the "reality" of the situation. From what I'm reading across the net, your experience is atypical. It is no doubt annoying as hell, and I feel for you in that regard, but that doesn't change the basic fact that they've done a very good job compared to other software services rollouts in the past.

As to your second statement, I probably wouldn't want to list with them either. Tell you what, send me a PM with your email address and I'll see if I can get someone to at least reply to your problem.

-Joe


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## JennyJ (Jul 20, 2011)

yep


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

I'm very sorry for Victoria and the others, but for me it all went lightening fast and without a hiccup.
I've sold a few books meanwhile as well.
I just wish they would give us statistics about the free downloads. As it is, I've no idea what the turnover is from whatever little promotion I do.


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

genevieveaclark said:


> If anyone has a contact for help / support that actually gets a response, I'd appreciate if they'd list it. So far not having much luck with that using the tools on the website.


Someone mentioned a response from the [email protected] address. That's not the one they give for Writing Life help, it appears to be the general bookstore help, but it's worth a shot.


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## Richardcrasta (Jul 29, 2010)

I unpublished a few (and luckily, not ALL) of my Smashwords books from Kobo, intending to do it the right way, but now find two out of three of my books are stuck in publishing with Kobo, and am wondering whether I can put them back on Smashwords and wait for the Kobo publishing issues to be resolved and books to be actually up before I unpublish them from Smashwords. Any advice on this?

(Yes, I did have one book go up in a few hours, but that was a simple, short, and minor book.)

Thanks.


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## theaatkinson (Sep 22, 2010)

well, i had a stuck book and it turned out it was an html error. I used word, saved as html, and a weird error cropped up about margins. There was no error. I checked. So I altered the web options to disable features not supported by (under tools options, web options)

worked like a charm. I uploaded again, and it published within seconds.

maybe this could help?

t


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## scottnicholson (Jan 31, 2010)

I'd guess there may be other internal hiccups--I was selling a couple a day in the early Beta testing, showing sales from only Australia and New Zealand, then I hit a week where a lot of Canada sales were showing up and I was getting 8 to 18 sales a day, and then sometime around the time of the public release, I dropped back to 1 or 2 sales a day.

Of course, it could easily be that the flood of new books simply buried me, but it was a dramatic and unusual bell curve. So I am sticking with the theory of patience, and awareness of how fragile all the systems are in all the stores, and gratitude that I have the opportunity.

On the other hand, most of my books have sailed through publication in about an hour, except for two days of beta when they had scheduled freezes. That includes one after the beta phase. Judging by the commitment, hard work, and progress displayed during that beta test, it made me very confident of Kobo's future and I expect continued improvements overall, including the search engine and promo oportunities. Unlike pretty much every other store, these guys have only one master and one task, and that is selling digital books. Good luck!


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

Richard, Bleekness, if you haven't tried changing the names of your cover and epub files, do that. It unstuck a couple of mine. The third wouldn't budge, even after I did that a few times. I did it again, changing the dimensions of the cover image and a word or two in the description. About 12 hours later, it was up. I have no idea if there's a cause/effect there. The ones that unstuck earlier did so very quickly. 

I've had about 10 sales in the last week, which is 10 more than I expected, so I'm pleased. I'm not looking forward to uploading a new release, however, because there seems to be a 1 in 3 chance, given my experience, that it will hang. And since it seems people who had that problem on the first day haven't gotten so much as a "we're working on the problem, sorry" message, I would have little hope of getting assistance now. I feel for your frustration. 

I'm sure Kobo will iron the kinks out eventually, and I'm looking forward to that day. I can only hope (and optimistically assume) that the problems with getting a response or help in the beginning is not an indicator of how it will be in the future.

Unfortunately, your only course of action right now is to wait. And apparently while you're waiting remember that, no matter what fringe problems you're experiencing, Kobo is wonderful.


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## Richardcrasta (Jul 29, 2010)

An observation on the side, not directly related to the publishing: if I search for my books (the Smashwords ones that are still on), I get the books that are mine, and also many books that seem completely unrelated, such as Teabonics and Guardian of the Onyx Empire . . . unless all of them had characters named Richard Crasta in them, which is highly unlikely.

as in here: http://www.kobobooks.com/search/search.html?q=richard+crasta&t=all&f=keyword&p=1&s=numpurchases&g=both&l=

It's okay with me, but I wonder if it is also true for others.


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

genevieveaclark said:


> You and me both.
> 
> Heh. I do feel bad for that Mark guy. I have this image of him watching his inbox unfurl with quiet despair.


It's a business. Everybody hated the Meatgrinder and the slow updates. I'm sure a lot of that was the partners, and not SW. We little peeps in the sheep pen have to go where's best for us.


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## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

I had four books stuck for about a week, out of 23 uploaded. Two remained stuck longer than that, and finally cleared.

With each of those four I re-uploaded the same content. Not sure whether that had a hand in getting them over the line.


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## MQ (Jan 5, 2011)

I have all of my (19) books stuck in 'Publishing' since last Thursday.  Yesterday I tried changing the names of some of my epubs and uploading them again but they are still stuck.  I even sent an e-mail to [email protected] last night but as of this writing no response. 

It's so frustrating


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## Kia Zi Shiru (Feb 7, 2011)

I finally got a response to my email. They advised that I do my prices manually...

Even though I explicitly stated that because of their thing that they don't allow prices below 0.99 cents I can't do this. I even showed them why I couldn't do this.

I was really frustrated, no other response then "You can always override the price, you should do that."
I'm not the stupid one... they have a crappy pricing scheme...


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

Mobashar Qureshi said:


> I have all of my (19) books stuck in 'Publishing' since last Thursday. Yesterday I tried changing the names of some of my epubs and uploading them again but they are still stuck. I even sent an e-mail to [email protected] last night but as of this writing no response.
> 
> It's so frustrating


I uploaded one Friday afternoon, so it hasn't quite been the 72 hours yet, hence I haven't yet emailed. I sure do wish someone or something would jiggle the handle and get my book out there, so it can not sell any copies the proper way, heehee!


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

Okay, it's been over 72 hours, so I just sent an email to [email protected], which is the email listed on the Publishing page.

We'll see!


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## Richardcrasta (Jul 29, 2010)

The only book of mine that got published in around 7-10 hours was a mobi file. Laborious process: doc to .html, then mobipocket to prc, then calibre for prc to mobi, then upload.

The other 2, epubs, were stuck for days. 

So I have now uploaded mobi files and am waiting to see what happens.

What does it mean if, when you click the 'publish" button, the "publishing" dialog goes on and on and on and never stops? Does it mean it is failing to publish?

I wonder too if Kobo has strict limits on cover pixel dimensions, and if my uploads are wrong from that point of view. With Amazon, Smashwords, Pubit, the dimensions are specified, but here I just see a maximum 2MB file size.

Thanks!


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## Jnassise (Mar 22, 2010)

Spoke to the Kobo folks this morning.  Word on the stuck files is that it is not a KWL issue but rather a back-end issue that they do not have direct control over, which is why they haven't just reached in a fixed it for all of us. (Yes, I have a stuck book too.)  They are doing everything they can to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

-Joe


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

Jnassise said:


> Spoke to the Kobo folks this morning. Word on the stuck files is that it is not a KWL issue but rather a back-end issue that they do not have direct control over, which is why they haven't just reached in a fixed it for all of us. (Yes, I have a stuck book too.) They are doing everything they can to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
> 
> -Joe


Thanks for the update.


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## AmberC (Mar 28, 2012)

For those that haven't uploaded yet but are planning to is there a way to avoid the stuck book issue? File type? Magic pass word?


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

Sweetapple said:


> For those that haven't uploaded yet but are planning to is there a way to avoid the stuck book issue? File type? Magic pass word?


You pays your money, and you takes your chances.

(Uploading started when, the 19th? So this has been an ongoing problem for almost two weeks now. I would _think_ they're going to fix it soon, so I'm just holding off uploading anything else until that time.)


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

Sweetapple said:


> For those that haven't uploaded yet but are planning to is there a way to avoid the stuck book issue? File type? Magic pass word?


The password is chowderbucket.


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

Sweetapple said:


> For those that haven't uploaded yet but are planning to is there a way to avoid the stuck book issue? File type? Magic pass word?


Not sure. My seven books went up in under thirty minutes (and that includes registration).

* My registration was brand new. I had no (other) account whatsoever with Kobo, so no possible conflicts. Don't know if this matters.
* I uploaded _validated_ epubs. I made them with the free program Sigil which has a built-in validation module. If something is wrong it tells you what and where. I suspect some minor, trifling thing might be off with the stuck files, but I'm really guessing here.


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## Zelah Meyer (Jun 15, 2011)

I think that DJ:W may also be stuck after being submitted via Smashwords.  Certainly, there's still no sign of it yet & the channel manager says it was shipped on the 16th July.

Mind you, there's still no sign of my CreateSpace paperback on Amazon.com (published on the 18th) - even though it went live on Amazon.co.uk within a couple of days and I have a copy sitting on top of my PC!

It seems that sometimes we just fall foul of annoying glitches.


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## Jnassise (Mar 22, 2010)

No, there isn't anything you can do specifically to get it unstuck nor something you should do beforehand to keep it from happening. (At least, they didn't suggest anything.)

I do not believe it is a validation issue, as the epub I uploaded has been validated by epubcheck and is free of errors in that regard.  

-Joe


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## MQ (Jan 5, 2011)

Today I received the following response from Kobo:

_Hi Mobashar,

Thank you for contacting Kobo Customer Care. We've escalated your issue to our Tier 2 support team.

The Tier 2 team will try to provide a resolution as soon as possible and will contact you if they require additional information in order to resolve your issue.

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.

Sincerely,
The Kobo Team_

I checked and my books are still stuck in 'Publishing' . Hopefully, the Tier 2 team can help.


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## Jake Decker (Jul 27, 2012)

Is KWL different than publishing to Kobo via Smashwords? And if so, I guess that means you had to buy an ISBN for $125?


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## Kia Zi Shiru (Feb 7, 2011)

brianb18 said:


> Is KWL different than publishing to Kobo via Smashwords? And if so, I guess that means you had to buy an ISBN for $125?


KWL allows you easy access to your files, description, price, everything, just like if you direct publish to Amazon.
The reason most use it is because of the control you get.

And no, you don't need an ISBN. You can buy and use one, but it is not needed to upload, just like Amazon.


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## Jake Decker (Jul 27, 2012)

Thanks for the clarification kiazishiru.

-Brian


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## DRMarvello (Dec 3, 2011)

Victoria Champion said:


> Any IT's want to tell us what that means about the back-end? Is that servers that are hosted via a third party, and that is why they don't have direct control?


The term "back end" isn't specific enough to tell us the real situation, but I can guess based on normal IT development practices. My guess is that KWL is a more-or-less stand-alone system that had to be integrated with the existing Kobo e-commerce site. They probably had to create a new interface that facilitates the two systems talking together properly, and that interface (or the underlying system it connects to) would likely be called a "back end" by the people who work on the KWL team.

Here's the good news. If the problem is in that interface that connects the systems, it is likely that correcting the problem will fix it for all books currently in limbo and all books going forward.


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## Adam Pepper (May 28, 2011)

I'm stuck in no mans land for about 4 days now.


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

genevieveaclark said:


> I appreciate that large, complex technical projects often have a number of difficulties in their initial stages. And I understand that Kobo has responded to some people, and I appreciate all the writers who've shared their experiences and correspondence so that those of us who haven't heard anything aren't completely in the dark.
> 
> But gd, it is absolutely *ridiculous* not to have heard anything.


Agree. And I don't like the graphical interface with the silly things the page says while it's loading. Give me plain text that loads in a heartbeat.

I find the little quips insulting.

Our business is not silly. For many people, this is our livelihood. You don't joke around about people's money.


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## mckat (May 4, 2012)

[Deleted because I disagree with the new terms of service.]


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

I don't think the long delay in responding or fixing the problem bodes well for the level of customer service Kobo might offer in the future, frankly. I'll be glad to be wrong, but that remains to be seen.

We've been told in this thread that most people are happy with their Kobo publishing experience. How that's determined, I don't know. Yet, if most people didn't have a problem, how would their email load be so substantial that they can't respond to people in a more timely manner? Those two things don't seem to go together. It leads me to believe that the technical problem of stuck books has happened to more than a handful of people, as has been suggested. And that it's still happening to people almost two weeks on is pretty discouraging. We can only hope that it's the only big problem they're working on.



dalya said:


> Agree. And I don't like the graphical interface with the silly things the page says while it's loading. Give me plain text that loads in a heartbeat.
> 
> I find the little quips insulting.


I didn't pay much attention until I had problems. Then I couldn't help think that maybe they should have spent less time and effort on the cutesy interface and a little more on making things work.

Once the stuck-book issue is ironed out, hopefully things will improve and they'll reply to problems before too many days pass. But at this point, it's not something I take on faith. I'm thrilled to have another outlet, and aside from having books stuck (which I eventually got unstuck), I'm pleased. I sold some copies that I wouldn't have without Kobo. I'm encouraged by that.

I'm hopeful that things will work out and it'll be a great experience, but I'm not unreasonable or impatient to have concerns.


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## Nicole Ciacchella (May 21, 2012)

Add me to the list of people whose books are stuck at the "in progress" status.  I uploaded the file on the morning of the 29th.  

I had been reading this thread but stopped right around the time Kobo went live and people first started publishing to it.  Now I really wish I'd stuck around so I could have just waited on uploading to Kobo until this problem is resolved.


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## Kia Zi Shiru (Feb 7, 2011)

My latest reply about my price issues at Kobo makes me want to pull my $0.99 book.

Apparently, if you put the $0.99 price on your book they will soon be no longer calculating the other prices but also putting them at the minimum price.
aka, a book that is now $0.99 is 0.70 pound and 0.80 euro. After they put the change through all the books will be 0.99, no matter if your base price will take it below that price because of conversions.

Which will, as I have tried to point out to them multiple times, bring my price at Kobo higher than my price for non-US buyers at the UK Amazon store, all the other European Amazon stores and Smashwords.
Their reason? Costs on their end. Well, the costs on their end will be the reason I won't be able to comply with their own TOS.

It's nice that they have a widespread store, but I'm not keen on conning my readers out of more money than they would in other stores because Kobo has a weird price thing.
After this I kinda feel like pulling my 0.99 book and re-evaluate this pricing thing when I have a more expensive book.


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## The 13th Doctor (May 31, 2012)

My dashboard is saying I have 0 books for sale. But when I click on "ebooks" they're all there (3 for sale and 2 stuck).


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

kiazishiru said:


> Their reason? Costs on their end. Well, the costs on their end will be the reason I won't be able to comply with their own TOS.


I am trying hard to like Kobo, and I sincerely hope that they can get a foothold. They are amiable and apparently not very evil, but their TOS are (still) a joke. Their executives claim that they don't say what they say, or at least mean what they say. Yet they have not been updated since July 13 despite their assertions that, golly gee, they don't mean to be dropping your royalty to 40% or whatever for all books based on the fact that *one* book on your account doesn't qualify for the higher rate. I can accept that they are busy right now, but come on. Enough time has passed for them to "clarify" their totally wrong TOS. This is not exactly some minor, obscure point. It has a huge impact on how much many people are owed, like by a factor of nearly two. Since they don't proofread their TOS, or run them past executives apparently, I don't see why a "clarification" of their intentions with royalty rates takes so long.

At this point, I consider Kobo a platform for distributing free ebooks as an alternative to KDP Select. They can have whatever percentage of 0.00 they feel they are owed until such time as they can fix their TOS, show some basic competence at running a database, and be trusted with actual money.

I am a programmer myself and have been plagued with my share of bugs. I sympathize. But the truth is that they need to take these things much more seriously or they will get steamrolled. Amazon *still* has the only even remotely usable search engine and therefore has lots of latent power that they have not yet exercized fully. If Kobo has to keep relying on Amazon's showroom, Amazon can really mess them up at will by giving extreme preference to books that are exclusive to (or cheaper at) Amazon or any number of other things that can put the hurt on them. Or even just undercut them and start selling EPubs too. If people are accustomed to going there for searches, and they suddenly see ePubs at better prices that they could read on their current device...

I hope they are working on these things instead of more cute emails and dialog boxes. I don't care how crummy their author interface *looks*--I just want it to work. Ditto the store and the accounting and the TOS.


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## Claudia Lefeve (Dec 17, 2010)

I'd hoped to see at the end of this thread some kind of resolution (before I start emailing Kobo again), but looks like things are still the same in terms of being "stuck". I uploaded 4 of my files over a week ago and I still have 2 stuck. What hurts is that they published book 2 of my series, but the first book is still in publishing mode. 

I'd be more upset, but since I couldn't upload through Kobo at all a month ago, I guess I can wait the bugs out...


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## Alex MacLean (Jul 6, 2011)

My book is stuck too. Anyone have a plunger?


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## JodyWallace (Mar 29, 2011)

garam81 said:


> My dashboard is saying I have 0 books for sale. But when I click on "ebooks" they're all there (3 for sale and 2 stuck).


Me too. I am assuming it has something to do with the August changeover. By 'assuming' I mean 'hoping' it will magically straighten itself out. I had a book stuck for nearly a week and was pretty excited when it popped free!


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## Alondo (Aug 30, 2011)

I tried to set up an account and got a warning message saying I should proceed no farther as their site certificate isn’t trusted and may constitute an attack page! It seems that they still have a few bugs to sort out…


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

genevieveaclark said:


> Yeah, the cutesy BS is pretty condescending. I feel that way about Pubit, too, but it's considerably more grating when I'm looking at a Dashboard that won't let me publish my books.
> 
> Still no communication.


STILL NO EMAIL! STILL NO PUBLISH!

AUTHOR TANTRUM!

Prepare the volcano.


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## BRONZEAGE (Jun 25, 2011)

garam81 said:


> My dashboard is saying I have 0 books for sale. But when I click on "ebooks" they're all there (3 for sale and 2 stuck).


Yes. And don't send an email asking about that, because

then you'll be stuck in email H*ll with replies indicating Kobo did not read your initial email inquiry with any possible glimmer of comprehension and if they had, would still not know what to answer.

But relax as someone claimed earlier, we are going to just loooooooooooooooove Kobo's WL. -- Ehm. Like. WHEN ?


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## The 13th Doctor (May 31, 2012)

I'm not going to bother to send an email. I'll just play the old waiting game.


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## Alondo (Aug 30, 2011)

So, am I the only one getting the viral "attack page" message when I try and access Kobo


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## The 13th Doctor (May 31, 2012)

Alondo, I can't speak for everyone but I'm certainly not getting any pages like that.

Granted, I start writing "kobo" into my browser and the link taking me straight to my dashboard appears but I'm not seeing anything suspicious.

Sorry to hear that you are.


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## Thomas Watson (Mar 8, 2012)

Alondo... Are you using Norton Antivirus by any chance? I get false alarms from mine, from time to time. Unless a bunch of people here start reporting the same result, I wouldn't worry about it.


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

BRONZEAGE said:


> But relax as someone claimed earlier, we are going to just loooooooooooooooove Kobo's WL. -- Ehm. Like. WHEN ?


I think they are trying. I can't see any outward evidence lately, but you never know what they may be working on that hasn't gone live. If I were in charge, you would outwardly see exactly the same thing because I would freeze KWL and tell every competent programmer to go get a basic search engine working. Fingers crossed that it is something like that going on. We all win if they can get things working.

I did have some success at unsticking a book's price by delisting it and then waiting for it to disappear and relisting again as a freebie. I don't know whether that will help anyone with their various stuck book problems. But delisting seemed to be helpful in getting that publish button to go from gray to green for another try. Or maybe my sample of one datum is not enough to show anything. Could be a coincidence.


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## BRONZEAGE (Jun 25, 2011)

Nathan Elliott said:


> I think they are trying. I can't see any outward evidence lately, but you never know what they may be working on that hasn't gone live.


For anyone else having covers missing, the issue here was that the cover wasn't showing on the book's product page but it showed just fine on the "dashboard". When asked about it/how to fix it, the Kobo reply asked about another book, that has nothing to do with this title or small imprint. Hadn't been the subject of the inquiry. *huh?*


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

The TOS issue worried me at first, but not anymore. Yes, I want them to update it with correct information. But the royalties I've earned so far are showing that I'm being credited for 70% on my titles above $1.99 and 45% on the single 99 cent title I have, just like they apparently intended but didn't manage to express. So the actual royalties are in line with what they meant to say in the rather dodgy TOS, but didn't.

I think we're safe.


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## MH Sargent (Apr 8, 2010)

I put one of my books in Kobo a couple of weeks ago, and today I check the dashboard and it says I have zero books for sale. What's up with that? I go to Kobo and search under my book title, Seven Days From Sunday, or my name, it comes up for sale.

Anyone got any ideas??


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

MH Sargent said:


> I put one of my books in Kobo a couple of weeks ago, and today I check the dashboard and it says I have zero books for sale. What's up with that? I go to Kobo and search under my book title, Seven Days From Sunday, or my name, it comes up for sale.
> 
> Anyone got any ideas??


Mine switched to 0 today, but all of my titles are still there when I search the store. It probably reset with the new month or something goofy like that. I wouldn't worry about it as long as your titles are in the store and for sale.


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## MH Sargent (Apr 8, 2010)

Thanks, Shelley. I had the same thought, as long as it is in the store, all is well. Maybe I need to sell one, just one on Kobo, and it would show the book as available.


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

shelleyo1 said:


> The TOS issue worried me at first, but not anymore. Yes, I want them to update it with correct information. But the royalties I've earned so far are showing that I'm being credited for 70% on my titles above $1.99 and 45% on the single 99 cent title I have, just like they apparently intended but didn't manage to express. So the actual royalties are in line with what they meant to say in the rather dodgy TOS, but didn't.
> 
> I think we're safe.


Probably. But the TOS thing screams carelessness, and that worries me in an industry where we are trusting the honesty and competence of the ebook sellers. There are no physical books to track here. Certain traditional publishers seem to knowingly invent fictional ebook royalty statements all the time. I hope that won't happen here whether intentionally or un-. Getting the basic functions on their site working reliably would make me feel a lot better even if that isn't directly connected to the accounting system. It would still say something positive about the basic competence of the organization. I dunno. Patience, I guess. I hope they do whatever they need to do to work it all out. But if I were them I'd hurry about it. Amazon isn't getting smaller and weaker with time as far as I can see.


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

Nathan Elliott said:


> Probably. But the TOS thing screams carelessness, and that worries me in an industry where we are trusting the honesty and competence of the ebook sellers. There are no physical books to track here. Certain traditional publishers seem to knowingly invent fictional ebook royalty statements all the time. I hope that won't happen here whether intentionally or un-. Getting the basic functions on their site working reliably would make me feel a lot better even if that isn't directly connected to the accounting system. It would still say something positive about the basic competence of the organization. I dunno. Patience, I guess. I hope they do whatever they need to do to work it all out. But if I were them I'd hurry about it. Amazon isn't getting smaller and weaker with time as far as I can see.


Oh, I agree. I merely think they really do intend to pay on the terms they said they meant, not what they wrote in the TOS. I'm with you on the rest. I want them to be fantastic, but my hope of that has started to fade. Once the bugs are ironed out, they could completely turn that around, though.

I am selling a little there, which is always a happy thing. I need one more sale in August and I'll hit the payout minimum, if it really is $25 as stated in the FAQ--the TOS says $100, so who knows.  I guess the first test of whether the payment goes well will be for those who hit $25 yesterday, so maybe the next month it'll be ironed out for those of us who didn't quite make it. My confidence in that, however, is not high.


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## JodyWallace (Mar 29, 2011)

Someone on another loop I'm on said Kobo Support said (oh dear, a lot of chances for miscommunication there!) -- anyway the Kobo person told her that the # of ebooks is at zero because you've uploaded zero THIS MONTH. Also said they'd gotten a lot of questions and were working on it. Yeah.


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

JodyWallace said:


> Someone on another loop I'm on said Kobo Support said (oh dear, a lot of chances for miscommunication there!) -- anyway the Kobo person told her that the # of ebooks is at zero because you've uploaded zero THIS MONTH.


Since it reset to 0 on the 1st, I figured it had something to do with the month. I guess it'll only show as "available" the books uploaded in that calendar month. Makes perfect sense. Unless you actually apply logic.  I'll bet their email load didn't get any lighter with that little development this morning.


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## C_Routon (Jun 7, 2012)

How long has it been taking for the book to show as published? I uploaded mine Tuesday night and as of this morning it said it was still processing.


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## JodyWallace (Mar 29, 2011)

The Kobo note says if your book is still stuck after 72 hours to let them know. I'm at 50 hours and watching carefully...


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

As of today, the 2nd book I published is now live, but not the 1st book. It's been 6 days and I did email them, but no response. Hey, maybe today's the day! One is better than none.


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## Saul Tanpepper (Feb 16, 2012)

Uploaded 5 yesterday and three are now published and available. The other two are still processing or publishing or whatever... Happy for the three, but the two not up yet happen to be the first in the series.


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

GRUMPYFACE

NO BOOK

NO EMAIL

7 DAYS IN PUBLISHING LIMBO

I emailed the 2 email address I had. Anyone have any secret email addresses? I'm running a promo on the book on August 8th and I'd sure like it to be up before the advertisement I paid $$$ for runs. You know. So I have some home of recouping the investment. (Okay, my book's on Kindle too, so I'm being dramatic, but still. Author tantrum time.)


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

Purely by accident (I hardly check my books _ever_ ) I noticed that Kobo now features a "You Might Like" strip right under the cover and just above the synopsis.
So, things are moving.
_(Sorry for you guys with books stuck in publishing)_
I wonder what the effect will be.


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## PaigeAspen (Jun 5, 2012)

My two stuck books became unstuck about an hour ago... Hoping everyone else gets to feel the unstuck bliss soon! 

P.S. Had only been stuck 6 days... So maybe they weren't "Stuck" like some of the others are?


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## Alex MacLean (Jul 6, 2011)

It took 4 days for mine to make it through.


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

I AM UNSTUCK! hallelujah! Time for rum and strawberries!


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## AmberC (Mar 28, 2012)

Yay! I'm so glad to hear of all the unsticking.


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## Jnassise (Mar 22, 2010)

My book is "unstuck" as well.


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## Richardcrasta (Jul 29, 2010)

3 of 4 books are now published and available on Kobo! Yay! Even though . . . no sales as yet.

Thanks to you all for the suggestions. Either the email to [email protected] or the reformatting through mobipocket & calibre worked. But now I will go ahead and slowly publish the others.


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## Adam Pepper (May 28, 2011)

10 days in Kobo limbo and no response to my email.


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## mckat (May 4, 2012)

[Deleted because I disagree with the new terms of service.]


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## MQ (Jan 5, 2011)

For four days I couldn't access my Kobo account.  I finally received a response two days ago that my account had been deactivated with no explanation as to why that had happened  .  I sent them an e-mail back asking why that was but I haven't heard back as of yet. It is now activated, though.

I still have 10 books stuck in 'Publishing'.  

So far my experience with Kobo has been nothing but disappointing


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## Hugh Howey (Feb 11, 2012)

I heard from someone on the Kobo team, and it is a glitch unrelated to the publishing mechanism. I think it occurred about two or three weeks ago, not long after Writing Life came out of beta.

Before that time, my uploaded books appeared in under 48 hours. Since then, it has taken weeks. I heard from elsewhere that part of the issue was the overwhelming crunch of demand.

I hope they get this sorted, as their dashboard is leagues better than anywhere else. I love the stats and the steps for setting books up. Withholding judgment until we see if they can iron this out.


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## Sean Thomas Fisher (Mar 25, 2011)

Here is the second email I received from "The Kobo Team" on August 3rd after one of my books became unstuck but wasn't showing up (and still isn't) on my dashboard.

_Hi Sean,

I'm, glad that your book was finally published. I'm sorry for the delay.

The issues you are experiencing with your publishing data could be related to the design of the monthly stats.

The monthly overview shows the user details about this calendar month. So, if you haven't published any titles in August, it will show up your count as zero. This is a 'design bug' issue; the designers who set up the 'month overview' details were capturing all data pertaining to that given month. They did not take into account that users would expect existing published titles to still show up there to show that they are still published. That design flaw will be fixed in the next update to Kobo Writing Life, which is coming in a few weeks' time.

We apologise for the confusion.

Sincerely,
The Kobo Team_

Sounds like somebody needs to call the Orkin Man


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

Could it be that these glitches are localized?

I took an account right after KWL became live. I uploaded seven books. The whole procedure took under thirty minutes, starting from zero.

Yesterday I had to upload new versions of two books (minor typos). Took minutes and they were live.

I'm sorry for you guys, but once they sort this out I think you'll find publishing on Kobo is a breeze.

Good luck to all.


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## Claudia Lefeve (Dec 17, 2010)

I still haven't heard back from Kobo after a week, so I tried to delete one of the stuck titles (won't let you because it's still "publishing"), so I deleted all the data. Then I started a new title and now that one's stuck in publishing mode. I guess I'll just ride out the storm...


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## Kia Zi Shiru (Feb 7, 2011)

I pulled my book from Kobo, after they told me all the books will in the future be at least 0.99 in all currencies (dollar, euro, pound) I decided that the 0 sales I got there wouldn't hurt me any more or less if I don't go there.
It is not only against their own TOC to do this price change thing, but I feel bad for my readers that they will have to pay more if they go through Kobo (unless they are from the USA, the only place my book is actually $0.99) than if they go through Amazon or Smashwords.
Smashwords is not that much harder to figure out then Kobo but at least they are okay when it's about pricing.

This might not be of much interest for people who are only interested in the US market, but I'm not from the US and I focus my marketing on both US and European markets. I refuse to have to let my European readers pay more for a book than my US readers.
It might not be much, but it's a matter of principle for me.


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

My stuck book did go live after about 8 days stuck in Publishing.

The next day, I got a reply from tech support asking me for the book's whatever-i.d. number. For real. Even though I clearly stated the book name and my author name. I guess they find the search function equally worthless.

On the plus side: when I got my first sale, they did send me a cute email about it.

On the minus side: how long to price changes take? Man, I changed a price and it's been an eternity (4 days).


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## GUTMAN (Dec 22, 2011)

Count me as one giving up, for now, on Kobo.  If I can't predict with any reasonable certainty publishing time, price change time, de-listing time, etc, then it doesn't help me do what I need to do to sell books.

Best for me to retreat until they work all of this out.

Now the problem is to get them to respond so I can close my account.  Crickets.  Really terrible, terrible communication, in my experience.

G


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## mckat (May 4, 2012)

[Deleted because I disagree with the new terms of service.]


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## Edward W. Robertson (May 18, 2010)

Oh goody, was a few hours away from emailing them. Thanks for the update.


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

> One of the reasons for the delays in publishing titles we have experienced recently has been a higher than normal volume of publishing requests.


They just opened the website.

Shouldn't they say "higher than anticipated"?

I suppose I'm being pedantic here, but HIGHER THAN _*NORMAL*_? Come on.

(Just like a writer to get all steamed over one word.)


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## Thomas Watson (Mar 8, 2012)

Hadn't checked this thread in a while. Sorry to see so little progress has been made.

I'll continue to hold off until I start seeing a few people breathing sighs of relief.


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

Based on that least email, I think I'll wait until Friday to upload the latest one and hope it goes through reasonably quickly. 

Someone got upbraided a little in this thread earlier for suggesting that Kobo beta-released a little too early. I'm not going to read back through to find who said they rolled it out too early, but I submit that person was right all along. 

Here's hoping improvements come more swiftly than we're being conditioned to expect.


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## Anne Frasier (Oct 22, 2009)

i'm about to pull the plug too. sigh. had such high hopes for kobo.


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## Incognita (Apr 3, 2011)

I had two books go through without a hitch. The one I uploaded yesterday is still publishing, which is definitely longer than it took for the other two. I'll see what happens. If it's still stuck after Thursday's promised fix, I'll contact support.


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## Richardcrasta (Jul 29, 2010)

If it helps, I have 2 out of 4 titles published, and my first sale, of a $7.99 book. Which certainly looks nice on my dashboard. Don't give up hope. However, perhaps publishing them one or two at a time, waiting for them to publish, and then publishing the next batch, might be better than publishing all in one go.


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## Guest (Aug 8, 2012)

Just published a new title this morning, and while it's too soon to say whether it's stuck, it's certainly taking longer than the others.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Sorry to hear about all the probs. I uploaded three before all this mess, but I'm holding off on the next one 'til it's fixed.

Got my first sale the other day (yey!). Some dude (or dudette) in the Netherlands. Alright!


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## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

Stuck, stuck, stuck and stucketty stuck. Almost a dozen titles all glued to 'publishing' with zero progress on any of them after several days.

I like the way you can change covers, prices, drm, descriptions, etc at the drop of a hat (unlike KDP), but it would be nice if they could actually, you know, publish the ebooks.


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## The 13th Doctor (May 31, 2012)

I have a few still in the "stuck" stage. Been like that for about a week, now. So I've put them on Kobo via Smashwords for now.


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## Accord64 (Mar 12, 2012)

garam81 said:


> I have a few still in the "stuck" stage. Been like that for about a week, now. So I've put them on Kobo via Smashwords for now.


The problem will still be there if you go through Smashwords. I updated my book cover a couple of months ago and have been since working with Smashwords to get Kobo to update it. No joy after a couple of re-shipments. I was thinking that there was something wrong with the Smashwords update process to Kobo, but now it's apparent that Kobo is the one with major issues.


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## The 13th Doctor (May 31, 2012)

Well, one of the books has already been shipped to Kobo, according to Smashwords, so I'll see if it appears on their website in a couple of days.

Maybe I'm best off just forgetting about Kobo for the moment until they can get everything sorted out. I hadn't made any sales on Kobo before KWL opened for business but with a couple of new books published recently, I just wanted to get them up everywhere as soon as possible.


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## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

I have just under $30 worth of sales on Kobo since KBL went live, and if you multiply that over a full year it's not to be sneezed at. That's with ebooks taking days/weeks to finally show up, and the search feature barely working.

A couple of those sales were to buyers in Singapore and South Africa, which are markets where (I believe) Amazon would only pay 35% royalty even on a $6.99 or $9.99 ebook listed under the 70% rate. Another plus to balance out the 'stuck stuck stuck!' I mutter under my breath every time I click the Ebooks link on KWL.


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## Thomas Watson (Mar 8, 2012)

garam81 said:


> Well, one of the books has already been shipped to Kobo, according to Smashwords, so I'll see if it appears on their website in a couple of days.


Books from Smashwords may well be getting caught up in this mess. They shipped Luck of Han'anga to Kobo on July 26. So far, there's no sign of it on their site - at least, not using their search.


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## Anne Frasier (Oct 22, 2009)

someone may have already mentioned this, but i wonder how long it takes to unpublish a title. i'm worried that it could take weeks.


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

Simon Haynes said:


> I have just under $30 worth of sales on Kobo since KBL went live, and if you multiply that over a full year it's not to be sneezed at. That's with ebooks taking days/weeks to finally show up, and the search feature barely working.
> 
> A couple of those sales were to buyers in Singapore and South Africa, which are markets where (I believe) Amazon would only pay 35% royalty even on a $6.99 or $9.99 ebook listed under the 70% rate. Another plus to balance out the 'stuck stuck stuck!' I mutter under my breath every time I click the Ebooks link on KWL.


I just hit about $36 in sales today. I managed to get 6 up on the 22nd, with 3 stuck for about a week. After making some changes to filenames and little things and reuploading (up to three times), I got those three unstuck. So all mine are live and selling a couple a day, on average. I'm not tearing up the charts, but I feel like you do--I'll take it.  It definitely will add up.

For those who can actually get their books _up_, it could be an extra income stream, if a small one. But I am _not_ looking forward to uploading the new one. It'll be ready tonight, tomorrow at the latest, but I'm thinking I might wait until the weekend. Get it past the Thursday mentioned in the email posted earlier in the thread in the (faint) hope that problems will be fixed.


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## Kia Zi Shiru (Feb 7, 2011)

Anne Frasier said:


> someone may have already mentioned this, but i wonder how long it takes to unpublish a title. i'm worried that it could take weeks.


I unlisted my book yesterday and it's no longer in the store today.


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## Anne Frasier (Oct 22, 2009)

kiazishiru said:


> I unlisted my book yesterday and it's no longer in the store today.


thanks! good to know!!


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

Anne Frasier said:


> someone may have already mentioned this, but i wonder how long it takes to unpublish a title. i'm worried that it could take weeks.


It was at most a couple of days in my case. It was actually stuck at the time I clicked the de-list link, so even if your book is stuck, you might be able to de-list.


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## GUTMAN (Dec 22, 2011)

Anne Frasier said:


> someone may have already mentioned this, but i wonder how long it takes to unpublish a title. i'm worried that it could take weeks.


I unlisted mine over a week ago. It shows as unlisted on the dashboard, but very much for sale on the site. Which might make it very thorny if you're going into select.

I'm not happy.


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## Edward W. Robertson (May 18, 2010)

My book just went through (4.5 days later). Anyone else with stuck books been published now that it's Magical Thursday?


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## The 13th Doctor (May 31, 2012)

Edward W. Robertson said:


> My book just went through (4.5 days later). Anyone else with stuck books been published now that it's Magical Thursday?


Thankfully, mine are now published. Now to take the books off Smashwords...


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## theaatkinson (Sep 22, 2010)

well, my books went live very quickly back in July when they first opened out of beta.

Once August hit, My dashboard showed no books for sale. I just assumed it was a glitch or it was for August and I hadn't uploaded anything.

today i want to adjust a price, only to discover I HAVE no books for sale there. i click on ebooks and get nada. I can't upload anything new. I have nothing to adjust. Nothing!

What the heck happened?


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## Guest (Aug 9, 2012)

Yeah, same thing has been happening on and off with me.  I assume it's just another dashboard glitch, since the titles are still up in the store.


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## Incognita (Apr 3, 2011)

My book that was stuck is now live, so I guess they fixed the problem. Time to upload another one.


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## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

A bunch of mine all went live in one go, even though they were uploaded days apart. De-glitching in progress from the look of it. I did get an email from cust support saying they were swamped.


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## Thomas Watson (Mar 8, 2012)

Simon Haynes said:


> A bunch of mine all went live in one go, even though they were uploaded days apart. De-glitching in progress from the look of it. I did get an email from cust support saying they were swamped.


Victims of their own success, before they actually had a chance to succeed. Only in the digital age... 

When they get past this I will surely use them. It remains promising, however rocky the start.


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## Saul Tanpepper (Feb 16, 2012)

Had 6 titles go up without a glitch or a hitch within 24 hours of uploading (spread out over several days following the KWL launch). Then had our book blogging book get stuck (I thought because I'd tried to make a change while it was publishing). After six days in limbo without being able to delist, I uploaded a second version. That, too, got stuck. Then the first went live. Now they're both live. The same book and cover (slightly different titles), two different prices, two different ISBNs. *sigh* Both are at exactly the same rankings, but neither show up when I click the categories they're ranked in.

Oh, and while my GR reviews have shown up on the book pages, they've shown up in the star ratings on only a handful of the books. My guess is they need to get more hamsters working those running wheels Either that or figure out a way to better automate things.

_edited to correct a misspelling_


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## Anne Frasier (Oct 22, 2009)

Gutman said:


> I unlisted mine over a week ago. It shows as unlisted on the dashboard, but very much for sale on the site. Which might make it very thorny if you're going into select.
> 
> I'm not happy.


Ugh. This is my fear.


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## mckat (May 4, 2012)

[Deleted because I disagree with the new terms of service.]


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## Victoria Champion (Jun 6, 2012)

My ebook is now up for sale on Kobo. Looks like the glitch fix was successful for me. I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised when I read this thread this morning and saw the promised Thursday fix actually fixed it! Good luck to the rest of you who are still stuck.


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## The 13th Doctor (May 31, 2012)

That's great to hear, Victoria!


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## MQ (Jan 5, 2011)

All my books are finally up on Kobo  

Haven't had a sale yet, though


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

I just uploaded my first new book since Kobo Writing Life opened for business and it took an hour or so for the book to be available in the Kobo store.

All of you with stuck books have my deepest sympathy, but personally I have only had good uploading experiences with Kobo. Now I only have to sell a book there.


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## A. Rosaria (Sep 12, 2010)

I had five books on, but after I changed the name of one three others disappeared. I'm wondering if Kobo is functioning at all.


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## Mike Dennis (Apr 26, 2010)

I just now came into this, very late, I know, but maybe someone can straighten me out. What's the big deal with everyone rushing to get on Kobo when no one has the e-reader? I mean, their market share of e-readers is miniscule, so why bother?


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## A. Rosaria (Sep 12, 2010)

I think their market share outside the USA is bigger, their readers are more widely sold in brick stores around the world compared to the kindle, also they don't charge international sales extra like Amazon does.


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

Mike Dennis said:


> I just now came into this, very late, I know, but maybe someone can straighten me out. What's the big deal with everyone rushing to get on Kobo when no one has the e-reader? I mean, their market share of e-readers is miniscule, so why bother?


They sell epub files which will also work on Sony readers, Nooks and a lot of other readers. Amazon's azw files can only be used with the Kindle.


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## Saul Tanpepper (Feb 16, 2012)

Mike Dennis said:


> I just now came into this, very late, I know, but maybe someone can straighten me out. What's the big deal with everyone rushing to get on Kobo when no one has the e-reader? I mean, their market share of e-readers is miniscule, so why bother?


I'm no expert, but a quick and dirty search indicates, at least off-record, that Kobo was 4th in US market share back at the end of last year at around 2-5% (Amazon ~60%, B&N ~30%, Apple ~10%). While small, it's not miniscule. 
(taken from here: http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2011/10/16/should-kobo-be-counted-as-one-of-the-3-major-ebookstores/)

More importantly, Kobo's market in Canada (yes, a much smaller market than the US, though by no means insignificant) was greater than Amazon's. We know Ammy.CA doesn't have ebooks. According to Wiki (again, subject to verification), Kobo had roughly twice Amazon's market share (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-book#Market_shares).

With its acquisition by Rakutan, coupled with its aggressive explansion plans and Ammy's and B&N's struggles to expland globally, Kobo is looking to become a global brand. It has 9 million registered users. Another not insignificant number. (http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2012/kobos-michael-tamblyn-publishers-should-experiment-more/).

They may be having growing pains where KWL is concerned, but customers are, for the most part, blind to all that. I wouldn't be so willing to dismiss them yet. And remember, we're not talking about the choice of placing books in Target versus Walmart. Most ebook customers don't have the flexibility to switch so readily. DRM aside, a Kobo owner will shop at Kobo, a Nook owner at B&N and a Kindle owner at Ammy.

Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with any of these companies, other than as a indie publisher using their services.


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## Adam Pepper (May 28, 2011)

I'm happy to say I'm up and running. Took a couple weeks but not the end of the world considering they're working through the kinks.


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## Romi (Apr 4, 2011)

Mike Dennis said:


> I just now came into this, very late, I know, but maybe someone can straighten me out. What's the big deal with everyone rushing to get on Kobo when no one has the e-reader? I mean, their market share of e-readers is miniscule, so why bother?


Definitely a Canada thing for me; been averaging one sale a day for my main title and sold 4 just yesterday(!). Since my book is set in Canada this means a lot to me  (have also had sales in Thailand, Singapore, and Australia, which don't have Kindle stores that I know of).


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## MH Sargent (Apr 8, 2010)

I finally sold a couple copies of my first book, so thought I would upload the next one tonight. I get to the upload file screen and it can't upload it. No reason. With my first book, there were too many characters in the file name. Not with this file. It just keeps saying, Sorry, we could not upload your file. Please try again. 

I've tried again and again. UGH. I've been following this thread on and off and saw people were stuck in publishing mode, but I can't even upload the epub file.

Double UGH.

I'll try again tomorrow.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

The covers and e-book files sometimes don't upload on the first try. If you try again, it usually works on the second or third try, though one book took approx. five or six tries until it was finally uploaded.


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## MH Sargent (Apr 8, 2010)

Thanks, Cora. But it has been dozens of tries. I'm going to watch The Closer   and tackle it tomorrow. Sure is frustrating.


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

MH Sargent said:


> I finally sold a couple copies of my first book, so thought I would upload the next one tonight. I get to the upload file screen and it can't upload it. No reason. With my first book, there were too many characters in the file name. Not with this file. It just keeps saying, Sorry, we could not upload your file. Please try again.
> 
> I've tried again and again. UGH. I've been following this thread on and off and saw people were stuck in publishing mode, but I can't even upload the epub file.
> 
> ...


I uploaded my books successfully when KWL started. Then, begin August, the Dashboard showed only one out of seven as available, though they all seemed to be in the shop. A few days ago Dashboard showed two as available. I tried to upload a new version of a book and I also got  Sorry, we could not upload your file. Please try again., repeatedly.

I was rather enthusiastic as I sold twelve copies over the first two weeks. Since begin August nothing. Now I'm worried the two might be related.

I sent an email yesterday to KWL and up until now the only response I got was an automated receipt.


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## MH Sargent (Apr 8, 2010)

I still can not upload my book this morning. Just the same message, Sorry we could not upload your file. Please try again.


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## JerryK (Feb 2, 2012)

MH, I suspect the problem is not Kobo, but something in your formatting. I had three books formatted epub by Jason Anderson--a great guy to work with--and they upoaded perectly within Kobo's 72 hour waiting period.


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## Hugh Howey (Feb 11, 2012)

Mike Dennis said:


> I just now came into this, very late, I know, but maybe someone can straighten me out. What's the big deal with everyone rushing to get on Kobo when no one has the e-reader? I mean, their market share of e-readers is miniscule, so why bother?


I have a Kobo. Wired magazine did an e-reader round-up and the Kobo Touch beat everything else. The screen technology is superior and it has a cool quilted padding on the back that really feels nice in your hand. They provide DRM-free epubs, which is something I've had a lot of readers ask for, and their setup is slick. I'm already doing better on Kobo than I do on Nook or iTunes. Some days I do better than both of these others combined. Oh, and their sales data blows everything else out of the water. I wish Amazon would spruce up their dashboards to look more like this.


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## MH Sargent (Apr 8, 2010)

JerryK said:


> MH, I suspect the problem is not Kobo, but something in your formatting. I had three books formatted epub by Jason Anderson--a great guy to work with--and they upoaded perectly within Kobo's 72 hour waiting period.


I don't think so, since I finally got it to go. That tells me it is a glitch. Why not take the file 100 times, then decide to take it? Because I was persistent? LOL. Now just 3 more to upload. Weird if you ask me. I did the first book as soon as Kobo came live for us indies without Smashwords, no problems. Hopefully the book won't languish in the publishing mode now as has happened to some authors on this thread. We'll see.


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## cheriereich (Feb 12, 2011)

Hugh Howey said:


> Oh, and their sales data blows everything else out of the water. I wish Amazon would spruce up their dashboards to look more like this.


I'm completely with you about Kobo's dashboards. They're awesome!


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## JonathanH (Aug 14, 2012)

MH Sargent said:


> Sorry we could not upload your file. Please try again.


I found and fixed one cause of this problem in some of my EPUBs over the weekend. The clue was in their guide for large publishers, "A Vendors Guide to Kobo":


> Use decimal entities in favour of character entities (use " in favour of ")


(Note that Barnes & Noble, Apple, and Google all handle HTML character entities just fine!)

In my case I was using to prevent some nasty Kindle line-breaking (replaced with normal space), & for ampersands (replaced with &), and &#8230; for ellipses (replaced with &#8230. I told Kobo tier two tech support they should mention this in the FAQ, and they said they were going to bump the suggestion over to their web team, so hopefully it will get documented soon


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## WilliamEsmont (May 3, 2010)

MH Sargent said:


> I still can not upload my book this morning. Just the same message, Sorry we could not upload your file. Please try again.


Try converting your ePub to mobi with Calibre and uploading that file. Worked for me. I downloaded the resulting preview from Kobo and all appears fine.


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

WilliamEsmont said:


> Try converting your ePub to mobi with Calibre and uploading that file. Worked for me. I downloaded the resulting preview from Kobo and all appears fine.


I did this with one of the books that uploaded fine initially, but now didn't&#8230; and it worked. Uploaded and converted in under a minute.

Thanks. 

ETA:

Did the others as well and they're all showing up in Dashboard.


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## Victoria Champion (Jun 6, 2012)

Well, it looks like all my formatting problems may actually be that the Kobo Desktop app is corrupt - and that my file is probably fine! Every ebook I load in Kobo is corrupted in the same way. I am discussing it with Kobo right now.


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## Victoria Champion (Jun 6, 2012)

My Kobo Desktop app was corrupt. I reinstalled it and the ebook works. Some of the formatting has been changed, yes, and I was informed that Kobo does indeed force its own styling on their ebooks (even though the guidelines say otherwise - that epubs will be published as-is). The only problem I really have at this point is that links are not clickable. I'll live with the other formatting changes.


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## MH Sargent (Apr 8, 2010)

Well, I got my other books (4) uploaded without a problem, and two are already for sale. So that's good.


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## WilliamEsmont (May 3, 2010)

Andrew Ashling said:


> I did this with one of the books that uploaded fine initially, but now didn't&#8230; and it worked. Uploaded and converted in under a minute.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> ...


The only problem with this approach is I think your metadata gets clobbered. I just opened mine in Calibre and it appears my subject tags (set in Sigil originally) are not showing up in the tags field. Bah.


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

WilliamEsmont said:


> The only problem with this approach is I think your metadata gets clobbered. I just opened mine in Calibre and it appears my subject tags (set in Sigil originally) are not showing up in the tags field. Bah.


I'm not too happy with the issues you and Victoria mentioned either.

This is the answer I received from Kobo:



> Hi Andrew,
> 
> We are very sorry to hear that you are having difficulties with the Kobo Writing Life service.
> 
> ...


I think I'll try to upload my Sigil-made epubs after their next update.


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## Edward W. Robertson (May 18, 2010)

Yesterday I changed my password to start fooling around with the Kobo app, and now I can't log in at all. B'oh.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

JonathanH said:


> I found and fixed one cause of this problem in some of my EPUBs over the weekend. The clue was in their guide for large publishers, "A Vendors Guide to Kobo"Note that Barnes & Noble, Apple, and Google all handle HTML character entities just fine!)
> 
> In my case I was using to prevent some nasty Kindle line-breaking (replaced with normal space), & for ampersands (replaced with &), and &#8230; for ellipses (replaced with &#8230. I told Kobo tier two tech support they should mention this in the FAQ, and they said they were going to bump the suggestion over to their web team, so hopefully it will get documented soon


Odd. I always use character entities and have never had any problems. But then I convert to epub with Calibre and uploaded that to Kobo.


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## JonathanH (Aug 14, 2012)

CoraBuhlert said:


> Odd. I always use character entities and have never had any problems. But then I convert to epub with Calibre and uploaded that to Kobo.


Makes sense - a bit of searching suggests that Calibre converts character entities into UTF8, and so avoids the problem. I was uploading EPUB directly after editing with Sigil. Maybe I should add a Calibre EPUB-to-EPUB conversion to my workflow


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

CoraBuhlert said:


> Odd. I always use character entities and have never had any problems. But then I convert to epub with Calibre and uploaded that to Kobo.





JonathanH said:


> Makes sense - a bit of searching suggests that Calibre converts character entities into UTF8, and so avoids the problem. I was uploading EPUB directly after editing with Sigil. Maybe I should add a Calibre EPUB-to-EPUB conversion to my workflow


So was I.

I'm going to look into Calibre epub-to-epub conversion, but I fear it will add a lot of extraneous Calibre-code as well, and maybe even remove things Calibre considers extraneous.


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## abbycake (Jul 22, 2012)

I just uploaded mine as mobi files and everything looked fine in the preview!! Now, they are just waiting to be published. 
I am hoping that maybe Canada has a taste for poetry that I am yet to find in the Amazon marketplace.


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## MH Sargent (Apr 8, 2010)

I uploaded 4 books several days ago, and 2 are stuck in the publishing mode. Do I contact them via email, or just wait it out??


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## JonathanH (Aug 14, 2012)

MH Sargent said:


> I uploaded 4 books several days ago, and 2 are stuck in the publishing mode. Do I contact them via email, or just wait it out??


If you've tried a couple of the suggestions (removing character entities if it's an EPUB, or converting EPUB-to-EPUB using Calibre), and it's been over 72 hours, I'd say go ahead and email them.


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## MH Sargent (Apr 8, 2010)

Jonathan, I haven't done that yet. I keep thinking it will catch up and publish. And why these 2 books, when the other 2 went just fine? Don't try to answer that. Rhetorical question.


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## MH Sargent (Apr 8, 2010)

Now all the books are there. Weird. But at least they made it. No longer stuck in publishing mode.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

abbycake said:


> I just uploaded mine as mobi files and everything looked fine in the preview!! Now, they are just waiting to be published.
> I am hoping that maybe Canada has a taste for poetry that I am yet to find in the Amazon marketplace.


Canada has a huge taste in poetry. It just has to be written by Canadians. We're like that up here.


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## NS (Jul 8, 2011)

Now I have gotten another problem. I de-listed one book two days ago and it's gone from my shelf, but it's live and well on the site. Now, this title  is in select already.  I emailed them and the answer was - If your works are still not live on our site, please try re-loading the file to see if that jogs it into our system... Huh?


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## Ernie Lindsey (Jul 6, 2010)

Natasha A. Salnikova said:


> Now I have gotten another problem. I de-listed one book two days ago and it's gone from my shelf, but it's live and well on the site. Now, this title is in select already. I emailed them and the answer was - If your works are still not live on our site, please try re-loading the file to see if that jogs it into our system... Huh?


Uh-oh.  I'm afraid I might be set up for the same problem. I unpublished a novel from Amazon, then re-uploaded it with a complete re-branding. New cover, new title, the works, but didn't put it in Select. I uploaded the new version to Kobo then realized that the old version's content is still technically in Select until Sep 21. I delisted it from Kobo a few days ago and after reading your post, I went out to check and yep, it's delisted on my dashboard, but still available for purchase. Sent them an email - we'll see if I get the same response.


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## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

Did either of you click the actual book and have the page come up? I have a bunch of delisted titles coming up on Kobo when I search by name/title, but when I click the listing I get a page saying 'the author removed this book'

Not an ideal situation.


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## NS (Jul 8, 2011)

Ernie Lindsey said:


> Uh-oh.  I'm afraid I might be set up for the same problem. I unpublished a novel from Amazon, then re-uploaded it with a complete re-branding. New cover, new title, the works, but didn't put it in Select. I uploaded the new version to Kobo then realized that the old version's content is still technically in Select until Sep 21. I delisted it from Kobo a few days ago and after reading your post, I went out to check and yep, it's delisted on my dashboard, but still available for purchase. Sent them an email - we'll see if I get the same response.


Please, update. No answer for me.


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## NS (Jul 8, 2011)

Simon Haynes said:


> Did either of you click the actual book and have the page come up? I have a bunch of delisted titles coming up on Kobo when I search by name/title, but when I click the listing I get a page saying 'the author removed this book'
> 
> Not an ideal situation.


The page with the book is up, I tried to purchase it and it worked.


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## Ernie Lindsey (Jul 6, 2010)

Simon Haynes said:


> Did either of you click the actual book and have the page come up? I have a bunch of delisted titles coming up on Kobo when I search by name/title, but when I click the listing I get a page saying 'the author removed this book'
> 
> Not an ideal situation.


I did. I went all the way to the purchase page and then backed out.

Natasha, the only response I've gotten so far is the standard "we've received your message" reply.


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