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posted by Fnord666 on Friday January 26 2018, @09:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the ebook-market-competition-at-last? dept.

Rakuten (the owner of Kobo) and Walmart have teamed up to take on the Amazon Kindle.

On Thursday Walmart and Rakuten announced a strategic partnership that makes Walmart Kobo's official partner here in the US:

As part of this alliance, Walmart will become Rakuten Kobo's exclusive mass retail partner for the Kobo brand in the U.S., offering Kobo's nearly six million titles from thousands of publishers and hundreds of thousands of authors to Walmart.com customers. Walmart.com will offer eBooks and audiobooks for sale later this year. Walmart will also sell digital book cards in stores, enabling more than 4,000 stores to carry a broader selection of books for customers.

All eBook content will be accessible through a Walmart/Kobo co-branded app available on all iOS and Android devices, a desktop app and Kobo e-Readers, which will also be sold at Walmart later this year.

Walmart is stepping into a role empty since Border went bankrupt in 2011. While Kobo has previously had US retail partners, including Indiebound and Family Christian Stores, they did not get the privilege of co-branded Kobo apps (just the financial benefit of a cut of ebook sales in exchange for selling Kobo hardware).

For what it is worth, Walmart gets the ebook app under its own brand. Given Kobo's negligible share of the US market, that won't be worth a lot of money, but it is at least an egoboost.


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  • (Score: 2) by chromas on Friday January 26 2018, @11:29PM

    by chromas (34) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 26 2018, @11:29PM (#628621) Journal

    I figured he was just pointing out that physical stores are more vulnerable to crowdfaults. It's my understanding Walmarts tend to be placed mostly in lower-income neighborhoods, where looting is more likely to happen. The Walmarts where I've lived have been pretty good though; nothing like People of Walmart. The worst I've seen is the occasional panhandler with sign standing near the parking lot exit.

    However, I did go to one in northern California that had a lot of seedy people around, and I thought it was closed at first because the sign and all the lights were off at the side entry point of the parking lot. I kept expecting to find needles lying around but I was pleasantly disappointed to not come across any.

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