Kobo Launching Valentine’s Day Promotion for Mini e-Reader

January 20, 2013 By Michael Kozlowski 5 Comments

Kobo is planning on launching a Valentine’s Day promotion for its five inch Mini e-Reader. It is slatted to begin on January 25th and run to February 14th 2013. Patrons will be able to pick up this device for $59.99 and also get a free snapback case in the color of their choice.

This promotion surfaced in a memo released by Kobo, by way of Ingram to Indie bookstores participating in the American Booksellers Association. Kobo will reimburse stores $20 for every Kobo Mini unit sold during the promotional period and $12 per free snapback given away with the specially priced Mini during the promotion period. If you are an ABA store looking to take advantage of this new promotion, you can get marketing materials and all of the data HERE.

The Kobo Mini is a very solid e-reader, with WIFI access and the ability to buy books right on the device. Many customers lament that a five inch screen is simply too small to read on. Major retailers (most notably Chapters/Indigo) in the last few weeks have been giving the Kobo Mini away with the purchase of the ARC tablet.

Michael Kozlowski

Michael Kozlowski is the Editor in Chief of Good e-Reader. He has been writing about audiobooks and e-readers for the past ten years. His articles have been picked up by major and local news sources and websites such as the CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and Verge.

MaskedHypocrite

“Major retailers in the last few weeks have been giving the Kobo Mini
away with the purchase of their ARC tablet, most notably
Chapters/Indigo.”

…which obviously means that both devices are *NOT* selling well at all. 🙁
Good E-Reader

The Mini is not selling well at all, almost every month there is another promotion selling it way below the 79.99 entry level price. The Glo is selling well, which is why they NEVER discount it. The Arc too, is honestly a fairly GOOD tablet, i mean not as money as the Nexus 7 or iPad Mini, but in most markets where its available, its a solid investment. The Mini, well..
MaskedHypocrite

I have an Arc. It’s actually a great tablet – once you ditch Tapestries (really wish there were a way to get the stock ICS launcher on it, but of course Google doesn’t have it up on Play) and disable the Discover Service, KoboTracking (very sinister name there – no idea what it’s doing, but…), and Asian character IME (which, for some reason, has permission to access contacts!) apps and get used to being denied access to many apps due to the lack of a GPS (like TuneIn Radio. Thanks for having it in your appstore. Works perfectly and makes me think they should just give a “Due to the lack of a XXXXX in your device, this app can not be guaranteed to work. Install at your own risk” on Play and let you install anyways :/).
Jason Hills

I’m curious as to how much it costs Kobo to manufacture the Mini. Obviously they took a loss giving it away for free, but there was the Black Friday U.S. deal where it was selling for as low as $50. Anyhow, I managed to get one at $50, and for that price I consider it a great deal. It’s size and price do make it a useful secondary device.

I suppose this might actually be a good idea on Kobo’s part if it get’s their hardware into more hands. Like a Mini trojan horse.
Paul

Kobo sales have doubled in 2012 and Kobo now has 20% of world ereader market.

“The Toronto-based, Japanese-owned e-reader company says it gained six
million new customers in 2012 — four million of those in the last six
months — bringing the total number of its registered digital readers to
12 million worldwide.” – http://www.ipolitics.ca
http://www.ipolitics.ca/2013/01/16/kobo-sales-double-e-reader-sales-in-2012/