Late last year Kobo developed an online kids store that has over 100,000 titles. There are plenty of innovative features such as safesearch and the ability to preload their kids account with credits to buy content, its like virtual allowance. Today, the Kids store has expanded from their Canadian roots and now is available in the United Kingdom.
Kobo has made it a point to offer a safe environment to browse and purchase kids content. Not only can you browse for books in age appropriate titles, but it will filter out non-kids books. Parents basically set up a second account in their child’s name, so there is no cross sharing of content.
The Kobo Kids Store was originally supposed to launch last summer, but was close to four months late in their official launch. This was due to erotica and romance titles from the companies self-publishing platform, Writing Life, creep into the kids section. This resulted in a firestorm in the UK, New Zealand and many other markets that had closed their Kobo powered store. All of this drama is sorted out and the Kids store is ready for international expansion.
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.