Kobo has two different distribution methods for selling e-readers in the United States. They sell them directly on their own website, which is how most people buy it. They also sell them on their new Amazon Store. They used to have distribution at Walmart, but that partnership ended a couple of years ago and before that they had an agreement with Boarders Books, until that company went bankrupt. We reported a couple of days ago that the Kobo Clara Colour and Kobo Sage were out of stock. Is Kobo abandoning the US market because Amazon is too hard to compete against?
The Kobo Clara Colour is not available on the United States website for Kobo, it is completely sold out and is not going to be available until sometime this summer. The Sage is completely unavailable and is likely discontinued. However, all of their current generation e-readers are available in other countries, such as Canada and the United Kingdom. The Kobo Amazon Store also has all of their e-readers in stock in multiple countries.
Kobo does not have any distribution anymore in the United States, when it comes to brick-and-mortar stores. They do have agreements with bookstores all over the world, such as Chapters Indigo in Canada, FNAC in France, Argos and Currys in the United Kingdom and other retailers all over Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Kobo has a huge distribution site where you can view every country that they operate in.
The United States market is one of the most powerful in the world and this is the one country where Kobo has a hard time finding a long term partner. Barnes and Noble sells the NOOK in over 600 bookstores, Amazon had distribution through Target, Best Buy and their own e-commerce platform. This doesn’t leave many other partners that Kobo can sell directly in-store. They just sell through Amazon, but the average customer can’t walk into a store and try before they buy.
It looks like there are three things happening with the US version of the Kobo website. They are legit out of stock in lots of items and will do another production run sometime soon, they are abandoning the market altogether or are going to be releasing new e-readers late summer or fall.
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.