How can publishers create graphical e-books without a lot of duplicated effort? That’s the question posed by Richard Stephenson on FutureBook in a post about the different approaches taken by Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple for displaying fixed-layout graphical content on their e-readers: Amazon's Kindle format 8 (KF8) relies on a completely separate process to create a fixed layout e-book than Apple's version of fixed layout for titles that are design-led e-books. Both are based on XHTML, but there are important differences in how pages are laid out. With KF8, each page has to be...

On Wired’s Epicenter blog, Tim Carmody writes about why he thinks that the main global e-book competitor Amazon has to worry about is Kobo. He points out that while Amazon and Apple have been making highly visible splashes with their new hardware or e-publishing initiatives, Kobo has quietly been building support from a multinational network of bookseller partners, including major booksellers in England, Hong Kong, and France. And now its acquisition by Rakuten adds all of Rakuten’s previously-existing worldwide digital book and media operations to the Kobo brand. “An e-book reader will ultimately not be only...

Engadget has the press release from Kobo on the completion of its purchase by e-commerce company Rakuten. Kobo’s HQ will remain in Toronto, though Rakuten is based in Japan. Given that Rakuten owns a lot of popular e-commerce and other industry sites already (including e-tailer Buy.com), it has the potential to give Kobo a lot more expansion and marketing opportunities than its erstwhile partner, the late Borders. Will that be enough to let Kobo catch up with Amazon, or even maintain its lead in international areas Amazon doesn’t service yet? That remains to be seen. But if there...

There are other 7” Android tablets out there than the Kindle, Nook, and Kobo. And as if to prove it, Geeks.com has put three of them on sale for under $100 today. The RPAD is $88.99 new, the Pandigital Novel is $98.99 refurbished (available in dark purple and red colors), and the Coby Kyros is $99.99 refurbished (“almost gone”). After that, the price jumps up to $249.99 for a couple of refurbished flavors of Galaxy Tab. Further research indicates that the RPAD is only $10 off what you could get it for on Amazon and has gotten two one-star...

eBookNewser reports that Kobo is selling $49 refurbished units of its Kobo Wi Fi reader, the non-touch-capable e-ink reader that it sold before the Kobo Touch. That’s a savings of $40 over list price. The reader appears to come with Kobo’s one-year standard warranty. I bought one of these readers when it was $60 at Borders’s going-out-of-business sale, and my Dad liked it so much he had me grab one for him, too and set it up for him (and now he uses it all the time). If you’re not interested in buying e-books from Amazon or Barnes...

Although the Kobo e-reading app shipped preloaded on the BlackBerry PlayBook, for the last couple of weeks it hasn’t been working properly for some PlayBook users. However, Kobo has just updated the app to version 1.3.1. There’s no hint of a change log in the release notes, but at least some of the affected PlayBook users report that this seems to have fixed the problems they were having. (Though others say that they are still having problems.) (Found via our sister blog, Gadgetell.)...

Mike Shatzkin’s latest blog entry looks at the quandary posed by converting “illustrated” books, which one estimate puts at 25% of print books sold, into e-books. The major problem is that usually the books have to be specifically formatted so that the pictures are in the right place—and when you come to different screen-sized devices, such as the 10” iPad, the 7” Kindle, Nook, or Kobo tablets, or the 3.5” iPhone and iPod Touch, that means one size definitely does not fit all. Although tools exist that make it relatively quick and easy for a designer...

When I first pointed out that Amazon was moving the price goal posts of its e-readers by referring to the with-ads price as the default rather than the ad-free price, I wondered whether other e-book sellers would be able to follow suit. Now it seems that one has. Kobo will knock $40 off the price of its $139.99 Kobo Touch e-reader for readers who are willing to put up with advertising elements “in discreet places outside of the reading experience,” such as the sleep or power-off mode screen. According to the listing on Kobo’s website, the $99.99 ad-supported reader...

As Amazon goes, so goes Kobo? A report from CBC suggests that would seem to be the case. Kobo CEO Michael Serbinis says that Kobo is developing a publishing arm to offer complete publishing services (including editing and design) for authors who would like to publish through it. It’s not clear from the article whether this service just covers e-books, or is like Amazon’s new publishing division in offering both electronic and print publication services. Either way, it’s one more way e-book-based firms are competing with traditional publishers, though traditional publishers don’t necessarily seem to be worried just yet....

It’s not really much of a surprise anymore given that the word leaked a couple of weeks ago, but Kobo has now officially announced its 7” “Vox” Android 2.3 tablet—though not at the $249 price it had at the time of the leak, but at a Kindle Fire-busting $199 instead. CNet’s David Carnoy says its specs compare more to the Nook Color than the Fire, however, with a slower 800 MHz processor. The best way to describe this is as a more open, generic looking version of the Nook Color, though it is worth mentioning that...

At FutureBook, “namenick” has a post explaining why he sees Kobo as being much better-suited than Amazon or Apple for international expansion. In short, Kobo has much better international content availability. Where Amazon has been opening separate stores for various different countries and languages (most recently a French store), Kobo makes all content for all languages available from the same store. One example which shows why Kobo is ahead of iBookstore or Kindle Store – Smashwords. Books from Smashwords are theoretically available at Kindle Store, Kobo and iBookstore. The deal with Amazon doesn’t seem...

More information has emerged about the Kobo Vox device we mentioned the other day, thanks to a quickly-yanked premature listing on Canadian Best Buy subsidiary Future Shop. The Vox will apparently be Kobo’s entry into the 7” color Android reader market currently occupied by the Nook Color and Kindle Fire. Judging from the specs on the listing, the Vox would have a 7”, 1024x600-resolution color LCD display; compatibility with Adobe DRM, ePUB, PDF, and Kobo e-book formats; 802.11b/g/n wifi; 8 GB internal memory plus an SD-card slot; and a speaker and headphone jack. Perhaps most intriguingly, the...