Rakuten Kobo, a global digital reading company created for those who put books at the centre of their lives, is working closely with Waterstones, the UK’s largest book retailer, to transfer its eBook customers to the Kobo eReading service.
Waterstones will stop selling eBooks on its website, and its current eBook customers will have the option to transfer their digital libraries to Kobo. Waterstones will continue to offer eBooks as a Kobo affiliate, directing its online customers to www.kobo.com.
Kobo will ensure that current Waterstones eBook customers not only experience a seamless migration of their current eBook libraries to Kobo’s eReading service, but that they also have access to Kobo’s catalogue of more than 5-million titles.
Waterstones will begin the digital migration of its eBook customers this month, after which time Rakuten Kobo will begin providing support for the digital libraries that customers have built up since the launch of Waterstones’ eBook platform*.
“We are pleased to be working with Waterstones, where we can help a great print retailer by supporting their customers who also love to read digitally,” said Michael Tamblyn, CEO, Rakuten Kobo. “We look forward to ensuring that customers who have built eBook libraries with Waterstones will be able to enjoy them in the future with Kobo.”
James Daunt, Waterstones MD said, “We are very pleased that customers of Waterstones will be able to enjoy their digital libraries through Kobo. It provides them seamless continuity, and ultimately an excellence of service we ourselves are unable to match.”
Waterstones will be sending its customers a series of emails, starting June 14th, with instructions on how to easily transfer their libraries to Rakuten Kobo, which will allow access to eBooks previously purchased at Waterstones, as well as new purchases at Kobo.com. For those customers who have both Waterstones eBooks and Rakuten Kobo accounts, instructions will be provided on how to merge the two.
As of the transfer, Waterstones customers will be able to access their eBooks on Kobo’s E Ink eReaders and free eReading apps built for the most popular smartphones and tablets.
*Only applies to books purchased through the eBook section of the Waterstones website.
For more information, please visit:
Rakuten Kobo – https://www.kobo.com/help/en-US/librarymigrationFAQ
Waterstones – https://www.waterstones.com/ebooks
About Rakuten Kobo Inc.
Rakuten Kobo Inc. is one of the world’s fastest-growing eReading services offering more than 5 million eBooks and magazines to millions of customers in 190 countries. Believing that consumers should have the freedom to read any book on any device, Kobo provides consumers with a choice when reading. Kobo offers an eReader for everyone with a wide variety of E Ink eReaders to suit any Reader’s style including the Kobo Aura H2O, Kobo Glo HD, and Kobo Touch 2.0. Along with the company’s free top-ranking eReading apps for Apple®, BlackBerry®, Android®, and Windows®, Kobo ensures the next great read is just a page-turn away. Headquartered in Toronto and owned by Tokyo-based Rakuten, Kobo eReaders can be found in major retail chains around the world. For more information, visit www.kobo.com.
About Waterstones Booksellers Ltd
Waterstones is the UK and Eire’s leading high street bookseller with 276 shops. It employs over 3,000 booksellers. Waterstones is the only national specialist book retailer of scale in the UK, with the average sized shop carrying a range of around 30,000 individual books and with over 200,000 titles in the largest shop.
