First Edition Design Publishing

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Kobo expands to South Africa to compete against Kindle

E-reader company Kobo is expanding to South Africa and hopes to make up 50 percent of the country’s small ebook market within a year, competing against Amazon’s Kindle.

 Ebook retailer Kobo announced its first African launch Tuesday evening: The company is partnering with South African retail chain Pick n Pay to sell the Kobo Touch e-reader and ebooks. Kobo promises local content available in Afrikaans and English.

The Kobo Touch will retail for 995 rand (USD $114). Amazon ships the Kindle to South Africa and it is also available in some retail stores there. The country’s ebook market is estimated to make up less than 1.5 percent of the total books market.

Pick n Pay, which also sells iPads, operates 847 stores in South Africa and 94 stores in other southern African countries like Botswana and Namibia, though the Kobo partnership is limited for now to its South African stores and will roll out among those gradually: “Pick n Pay’s general merchandise manager Paula Vieira said that the Kobo Touch would be available in 41 stores within a few days, expanding to 71 within a few weeks,” South African books website Books Live reported from the launch, with the Touch in “the majority” of the chain’s stores “within months.”

Books Live also reports that Kobo business development VP Todd Humphrey “said the company wants to own 50 percent of the SA ebook market within one year.”

Source: www.paidcontent.org By: Laura Hazard Owen Oct 31, 2012 

About First Edition Design Publishing:

First Edition Design Publishing is the world’s largest eBook and POD (Print On Demand) book distributor. Ranked first in the industry, First Edition Design Publishing converts and formats manuscripts for every type of platform (e-reader). They submit Fiction, Non-Fiction, Academic and Children’s Books to Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble, Sony, Google, Kobo, Diesel, 3M, Ingram, Baker and Taylor, Nielsen, EBSCO, and over 100,000 additional on-line locations including retailers, libraries, schools, colleges and universities. The company’s POD division creates printed books and makes them available worldwide through their distribution network. First Edition Design Publishing is a licensed and approved Aggregator and holds licenses with Apple and Microsoft.

Visit: www.firsteditiondesignpublishing.com