Did you just get a new Kobo ereader as a gift for Christmas or just purchased one for yourself? Kobo is globally recognized as the second most popular brand in the world and their devices are easily accessible at thousands of bookstores. Although Kobo e-readers are not overly complicated, but there are a number of tips and tricks to help you get started, and save money on purchasing digital content.
Overdrive – This company powers the digital collection of thousands of libraries in Canada, US, UK and other countries. You can borrow ebooks and browse your local branches collection on the Kobo Clara HD, Kobo Aura One, Kobo Forma and the Kobo Aura H2O edition 2. If you want to learn how to get started on where to enter your card number and how you borrow ebooks, checkout our video tutorial.
Kobo SuperPoints – Kobo SuperPoints rewards you with 100 points for every $10 you spend on e-books and digital magazines. You can use the virtual currency to get free ebooks, the average title costs around 2,400 points and there are over a million of them to select from. If you manage to accrue 4,500 points you can enroll yourself in the Kobo VIP program which saves you 10% off everything in their bookstore and you can also select one free e-book a year. At certain times during the year there are “Bonus Days” which will reward double the credits on everything in the store. Kobo has been very liberal with Bonus days during special events and holidays.
Kobo Insiders – Kobo Insiders is an online community where you can chat with other Kobo e-reader owners. You can also get involved in testing various beta programs and give your feedback. Every month there are a few different polls that ask about new initiatives Kobo is thinking of implementing. It is an invite only program, but if you buy lots of ebooks from the company, they will normally send you an invite.
Pocket – Kobo has an exclusive arrangement with Pocket that allows you to push website and blog articles directly to your e-Reader. The easiest way to do this is to download the Pocket browser extension for Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari. Once you download the extension and log into the service you can begin to push out all of the stories you want to read to your e-reader later and they will automatically be synced. The articles will include any links, pictures or text, but truncate shortcode and adverts.
Supported formats – All modern Kobo e-readers support EPUB, EPUB3, PDF, MOBI, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF, TXT, HTML, RFT, CBZ, and CBR.
Price Match – Kobo is one of the only e-reader companies that has a price match system. This system is aonly available for customers in the USA, Canada, UK, Australia, and New Zealand. Get a Kobo credit of the price difference plus 10% of the Kobo price!
Deals and Discounts – Mobileread chronicles all of the latest promo codes and discount codes for ebooks from Kobo. You can save some serious money by using them during the checkout process.
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.