As we were going to press, Kobo, in partnership with the online retailer Bol.com, announced a new ebook subscription service for Dutch and international titles.
Called Kobo Plus, the subscription service will be available to customers in the Netherlands and Belgium for €9.99 per month. At launch, the service offers readers more than 40,000 titles—16,000 in the Dutch language—with considerable growth expected this year.
The press release reports that Kobo Plus will be implementing a “fair-share” business model, with payouts funded by subscription revenues to ensure sustainability—and sustainability is certainly the key issue for any ebook subscription service, as we’ve reported in the past.
Bottom line: Publishers Marketplace notes (subscription required) that, for books distributed via Kobo Writing Life, authors will receive a portion of subscription fees based on reads—and a “read” will be triggered when a user has read at least 20 percent of the ebook. To be included in Kobo Plus, titles must be made available in Kobo Writing Life for a minimum of six months. A Kobo spokesperson would not confirm for Publishers Marketplace if the same payment terms apply to traditional publishers: “Although we don’t comment on individual publisher contracts, I can tell you is that it’s a price-rated, fair-share revenue model.”
Meanwhile, Kindle Unlimited remains the gargantuan player in the ebook subscription landscape, with more than 1.4 million titles offered (although no titles from the Big Five publishers). KU operates in 11 countries outside the US, but not in Belgium or the Netherlands.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
