I bought a Kobo e-reader, and I’m desperately trying to not make it a terrible investment but god it’s basically a paperweight. Especially for someone who primarily reads manga.

Picking a random manga volume it’s $19 physical, $13 on Kobo, $8 on Amazon, and $5 on mobile. I honestly can’t imagine anyone being able to justify paying $13 for an e-book that will still disappear if the Kobo store goes defunct (or more likely “when” given the state of the storefront). They don’t even have the phyiscal printing cost to justify those prices, it’s all data.

Then there’s the selection. Goes without saying that that’s awful. On Kindle I could even buy out of print books in Japanese if I wanted.

Then there’s Kobo Plus. You pay $20 a month to read a small slection of the library for free. Even if you find something interesting often only the first half is free and the rest is $13 a volume. Sometimes it’s a light novel labeled as manga by the company because of course it is.

The store is a place where if you’re lucky, you can overpay to read a book you can get elsewhere easier. I can’t imagine anyone, in any universe, being able to justify the prices. Maybe if I get Kobo plus and buy the rest of the series when I read them, but even that’s a tough sell.

At this rate, I might have to try and fleece it off to a friend and buy a kindle, but the price really hurts for something I can’t justify using over buying physical.

  • JoyfulCodingGuy@lemmy.ml
    1·
    11 days ago

    I don’t personally read manga but can’t you source your books from anywhere and just drag and drop then onto the device? That’s what I do for normal comics and ebooks with CBR files for comics and EPUB files for other books.

    I have bought a book or two on the Kobo store because I wanted access to the book the day it came out vs. waiting to source it via “other means” and I was able to just drag and drop off the Kobo that book to my computer and other devices for reading elsewhere. Granted this all depends on what encryption if any the store is using.

    But also it goes without saying that any alternative store would / could have their own encryption and thus make your purchase disappear if it goes defunct as you state.