The Kobo Clara is on sale in the United States at various online retailers for $99 USD, the regular price is $129. The main Kobo website is selling it for $99 for Black Friday and Walmart and Amazon are also selling it at this price too. This is the only e-reader they have discounted this year and there is zero savings on anything for Canadian residents, which includes Indigo Books and Music.
Kobo rarely discounts their e-readers during the year, instead they tend to run an endless promotion of audiobooks and ebooks. I think this is because with digital content, that is how they make their real money, it is not with the hardware. At the same time, is anyone buying books on the Kobo mobile apps for Android or iOS? You can’t even buy books on the iPad or iphone, since Rakuten and Kobo do not want to pay Apple a percentage of each sale. You can only do it on Android. This means that e-readers play an important role for driving book sales, but since they are rarely discounted, there is no incentive to buy one over a Kindle, which are always on sale.
Sure the Clara is on sale this year, it is considered the entry level e-reader. But the Forma, Libra H2O and other devices are at full price, and likely will never receive a discount.
If you want to know more about the Kobo Clara HD and are on the fence about buying one or not, checkout our comprehensive hands on review.
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.