In July 2012, Kobo announced that it would be launching a free service making it easier for self-published authors and small publishers to get their work into Kobo’s catalogue. We had more than 3,000 authors sign up on that first day and Kobo Writing Life was born.

In the past three years we’ve grown immensely. We now have 50,000 authors from 165 countries around the world and we’ve published books in 97 languages!

Not only do Kobo Writing Life titles sell in our own Kobo store, one of the world’s largest eBookstores, but KWL titles are also available on the virtual shelves of over 17,500 retail partner sites across the world.

Our global reach is important and can help authors reach readers far from their local communities. To date, Kobo Writing Life titles have been sold in more than 150 countries. That’s a lot of blue dots on your dashboard!

Here’s a screenshot of the dashboard of an author who’s been using KWL since 2012.

In three years, Kobo Writing Life has published just under 400,000 titles, thousands of which have reached the Top 50 Bestseller lists in multiple countries, and hundreds of which that have later sold to major publishers.

But apart from financial success, KWL has helped allow tens of thousands of authors to realize their dreams of becoming published. This is what we’re most proud of and we look forward to doing this for many, more years to come!