Rakuten Kobo is planning to implement some paid services for its e-readers. These services will be subscription-based, giving people a Send to Kindle alternative and access to Google Drive, Dropbox, and other cloud service providers. Storygraph, Goodreads, and other social book discovery platforms will also be available on the e-reader.
One of the most popular features of Kobo e-readers is borrowing e-books from Overdrive. You need a digital library card and a four-digit PIN, which you enter in the settings menu. The local branch will then appear, and users can browse, borrow, and read right on the e-reader. However, users can only browse one library, but Kobo might be planning to allow users to use multiple libraries simultaneously.
The Kobo Sage, Libra, and Elipsa products allow users to take notes, draw freehand, and solve complex math equations. Kobo might develop a better sync platform so that notes and everything else can be read on any Kobo e-reader. Users who draw on sideloaded e-books will also sync properly. Notes could also be exported into independent files, which can be read and edited on a PC or MAC.
How do we know Kobo is developing some or all of these features? The company emailed thousands of its power users a survey to help them understand what readers want and what new features they want to see on their e-readers. In the past, when they sent these out, they eventually implemented all of the stuff they talked about, from Color e-readers to digital notebooks.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
