Canadian book retailer Indigo launched Shortcovers, a great mobile reading app and ebook store, at the beginning of 2009.
At the end of 2009 Shortcovers changed into Kobo (one presumes to better capture the international market?):
We have changed our name from Shortcovers to Kobo. Kobo is an anagram of the word “book” and we think that it is a name that will appeal to readers around the world….plus we think it’s a catchy name!
We’ve also updated our web experience (http://www.kobobooks.com and mobile apps. If you are a Shortcovers customer, your account, password, library, profile – all remain the same…
So Coming Soon, we’ll be adding:
Over 1.8 million free eBooks from the Internet Archive!
New apps for smartphones, and the desktop (PC & MAC)
New supported devices…
More books from publishers around the world and the ability to buy in your local currencyOur objective with all of these changes is to give you, our valued customer, the ability to read ebooks anytime, anyplace, on the device of your choice. We hope you love our updated look and feel, new features and apps. There is more to come soon!” [more...]
I’ve always like the Shortcovers approach: get books to the devices people have (rather than building a new device for readers). It makes a lot of sense to me.
Good luck.
2 Comments
My question is: what happened to Stanza? At one time they were the leading ebook app for the iPhone. I was expecting that things would explode once in-app purchasing was available. It seemed that the iPhone ebook market was theirs to lose.
It is tempting to link their apparent lack of activity with their purchase by Amazon. Perhaps that is wrong, and they are about to surprise us.
A cynic might say that Amazon bought Stanza because it was a likely competitor to Kindle’s plans, with no strategic backing, hence relatively inexpensive to buy.