Late in January, Walmart and Kobo announced a retail partnership whereby Walmart will offer Kobo’s nearly 6 million titles, both ebooks and audiobooks, to Walmart.com customers. What’s more, while Kobo and Walmart will leverage sales through a co-branded app for iOS and Android devices, Walmart will sell digital book cards in stores for Kobo—just as Walmart Canada sells Enthrill gift cards. You can buy ebook gift cards in a physical store, and the recipient can redeem them for an ebook. In addition, the Kobo line of e-readers, which the company says are doing well in many of its international markets, will be sold by Walmart later in the year.
The most interesting facet here is Kobo’s access to the US market. It’s hardly overstating it to say that, prior to the Walmart deal, Kobo had largely given up on the American ebook scene, rightly seeing Amazon as too deeply entrenched. (According to the New York Times, Kobo has 1 percent of the US ebook market, and Amazon has 75 percent.) What makes the Walmart entrance so substantial is that it provides for Kobo what Amazon provides for itself: a retail vehicle that does not depend on books. As we’ve said many times (though some in publishing are eternally tone-deaf to this), Amazon is able to do what it does because it’s so much more than a bookstore. It’s a tech company, first and foremost, and then a retailer of all things.
While Walmart doesn’t have a footing in the tech world, it does have a massively wide retail base. Thus, Kobo gets a more stable partnership than it has had, for example, in its arrangement with the American Bookseller Association (ABA), which allows Kobo e-readers (and content for them) to be sold through independent bookstores. However, if a customer wants his or her Kobo device affiliated with an independent bookstore, the consumer will need to buy it from that bookstore or buy it on Kobo.
Bottom line: As we’ve mentioned before, Kobo has steadily enlarged its international footprint while leaving the US field to Amazon. In the past two to three years, the Toronto-based ebook retailer has made new alliances in the Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, and Australia, and it has become the tech platform partner of the German-born Tolino system, which also gives it a presence in Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, and Italy. On its home turf in Canada, Kobo bought the Shelfie technology, as well. However, we’re always amused to hear someone say Kobo is going to give Amazon a run for its money. Such folks inevitably don’t understand the sheer scale of Seattle’s hegemony. Kobo itself makes no such outlandish claims and has found a way to say what is still a lucrative line in the American sales lexicon: “Attention, Walmart shoppers.”
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.
