Read On

If you are clicking away and looking for great deals this Cyber Monday Kobo.com is your place to shop.

Our biggest eBook sale of 2011 is here! Stock up your library on bestsellers, favourite authors at the best prices!

Here are the amazing deals and savings on eBooks you will find this Cyber Monday at Kobo.com:

• Get 60% off over 1000 titles

• Get 50% off these select eBooks

• Get 30% off these select eBooks

• Get 20% off these select eBooks

Click here to start shopping.

Be sure to share these amazing Cyber Monday deals and savings with your friends and family!

This Black Friday forget strolling through the mall to find great deals, and certainly there is no need to fight the crowds in already busy stores.

Get comfortable because Kobo.com is your one stop shop this Black Friday.

Have you been waiting for great deals before you buy an eReader?

Check out the Black Friday deals at Kobo.com! Don’t miss out!

And don’t forget to visit our blog at blog.kobobooks.com on Sunday night for more details about our Cyber Monday Deals!!

Today we released the first software update for our Kobo Vox customers. If you have a Kobo Vox, your eReader will automatically prompt you to update the next time it connects to the Internet. You can also manually check for updates by going to Settings > About > Check for Updates.

This update includes fixes for the following:

• An issue that prevented screens from turning back on after the Kobo Vox went to sleep.

• An issue that prevented some Kobo Vox eReaders from downloading software updates.

Have any questions about your Kobo Vox update?

Please contact Kobo Customer Care via email: help@kobobooks.com or by phone: 1-855-732-3662

Download the Kobo Vox firmware update today, and discover your next great read on your Kobo Vox eReader!

For the first time, this year’s Canada Reads theme is non-fiction.

This year’s contenders range from an astonishing story of survival, tour memoirs from a Canadian rocker, a behind-the-scenes look at what it is to be a hockey player in the NHL, a woman’s story of revolution and activism, and a deadly encounter between men and a vicious tiger.

The Canada Reads 2012 five finalists are:

Something Fierce by Carmen Aguirre
Defended by: Shad

On a Cold Road by Dave Bidini
Defended by: Stacey McKenzie

Prisoner of Tehran by Marina Nemat
Defended by: Arlene Dickinson

The Tiger by John Vaillant
Defended by: Anne-France Goldwater

The Game by Ken Dryden
Defended by: Alan Thicke

Canada Reads is CBC Radio One’s annual battle of the books, in which each Canadian title is represented – and “defended” – by a Canadian personality. The five books are discussed, examined and weighed against each other. Over the course of four days, the finalists are debated and voted out one by one, until a winner is declared.

This year’s debates will take place from February 6th to 9th in front of a live audience.

CBC’s full story on the books and panelists here.

Have your own predictions for this year’s winner? Tell us what you think!

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Kobo, a Global Leader in eReading Expands Rakuten Offering to Include eBooks and eReaders Worldwide

TOKYO and TORONTO, November 8/9, 2011 — Rakuten, Inc. (JASDAQ: 4755) and Kobo Inc. today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Rakuten intends to acquire 100% of total issued and outstanding shares of Kobo for US$315 million in cash.

Kobo was founded by and spun out of Indigo, the largest book, gift and specialty toy retailer in Canada, in December, 2009. Since that time, Kobo has become a fierce competitor in the eBook marketplace, with a family of innovative eReaders, a wide range of eReading apps, one of the largest eBook catalogues, an innovative social platform and retail partners around the globe.

The acquisition marks a major step forward for Rakuten, one of the world’s top 3 e-commerce companies by revenue, as it continues to expand its unique B2B2C borderless e-commerce business globally, by adding an ecosystem to provide downloadable media products to consumers, starting with eBooks.

Hiroshi Mikitani, Chairman and CEO of Rakuten, commented on the acquisition, “We are very excited about this next step. Kobo provides one of the world’s most communal eBook reading experiences with its innovative integration of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter; while Rakuten offers Kobo unparalleled opportunities to extend its reach through some of the world’s largest regional e-commerce companies, including Buy.com in the US, Tradoria in Germany, Rakuten Brazil, Rakuten Taiwan, Lekutian in China, TARAD in Thailand, and Rakuten Belanja Online in Indonesia, and of course, Rakuten Ichiba in Japan.”

“From a business and cultural perspective this is a perfect match,” commented Kobo CEO Michael Serbinis. “We share a common vision of creating a content experience that is both global and social. Rakuten is already one of the world’s largest e-commerce platforms, while Kobo is the most social eBook service on the market and one of the world’s largest eBook stores with over 2.5 million titles. This transaction will greatly strengthen our position in our current markets and allow us to diversify quickly into other countries and e-commerce categories.”

Upon closing the acquisition, Kobo will continue to maintain its headquarters, management team and employees based in Toronto, Ontario.

The global eBook market is one of the fastest growing segments of the consumer technology industry, with a compound annual growth rate of 36% through 2015*. The global content market size is also expected to grow dramatically to reach approximately US$10.6 billion per year by 2015 (estimates exclude China).
*Sources: Based on forecasts by IDC, Yankee, BCG analysis & NRI for Japan 1USD= 80JPY

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including approval by Canadian regulatory authorities in accordance with the Investment Canada Act and is expected to close in Q1 2012.

About Kobo Inc. (www.kobo.com)
Kobo is a global eReading service with more than 2.5 million eBooks, magazines and newspapers – one of the largest eReading catalogues in the world. Read Freely – Kobo believes consumers should have the freedom to read any book on any device and has attracted millions of readers from over 100 countries across the globe. Kobo has top ranked eReading applications for iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows and MacOS, and is the eReading application of choice for leading tablet OEMs. Kobo eReaders, including the Kobo Touch and the newly launched Kobo Vox are available at leading retailers, including Indigo, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target, Future Shop, WHSmith, FNAC, Collins Booksellers and Whitcoull’s. Kobo’s innovative Reading Life is an industry-first comprehensive social eReading experience – Kobo users can earn awards simply for time spent reading and encouraging others. Kobo is backed by majority shareholder Indigo Books & Music Inc., Cheung Kong Holdings, and institutional investors.

About Rakuten
Rakuten, Inc. (JASDAQ: 4755), is one of the world’s leading Internet service companies, providing a variety of consumer and business-focused services including e-commerce, travel, banking, securities, credit card, e-money, portal & media, online marketing and professional sports. Rakuten is expanding globally and currently has operations throughout Asia, Western Europe, and the Americas. Founded in 1997, Rakuten is headquartered in Tokyo, with over 10,000 employees worldwide. For more information, visit http://global.rakuten.com/group.

For investor and media inquiries, please contact:

Rakuten:
In Japan: For Investors:
Public Relations (Japanese, English) Investor Relations (Japanese, English)
Rakuten, Inc. Rakuten, Inc.
Tel: +81-50-5817-1104 Tel: +81-3-6387-0555
E-mail: pr@mail.rakuten.com http://corp.rakuten.co.jp/en/ir/

In North America
Kelley Joyce
IF Communications
Tel: +1-917-566-0808
E-mail: kelley@if-communications.com

The latest version of Kobo’s iOS app showcases the most anticipated features yet: Kobo Pulse and Syncing Annotations .

Kobo Pulse takes social reading to the next level by allowing you to join the in-book conversations and share your insights with the Kobo Pulse community. Plus, your highlights and notes are synced across your iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch devices, so all your annotations are always accessible.

Social Reading gets even better with Kobo Pulse:

Feel the Life of A Book: Books come alive with Kobo Pulse. Find out how many people are reading with you and explore what people are saying about the hottest books. The Pulse indicator gets bigger and brighter on pages with the most activity, so you’ll never miss a lively discussion.

Join the Conversation: See what other readers think of your current read, share your ideas and opinions, and comment on individual passages and ongoing discussions with the Kobo Pulse Community.

Share your Reading Life: Share your comments and favourite passages -from your latest read, plus share your Reading Life awards and compare your reading stats with friends on Facebook and Twitter.

Your highlights and notes are now synced on iOS!

Sync your annotations: All of your notes and highlights are now synced, to the cloud and accessible on your iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch devices.

Update your Kobo app for iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch today here and join the conversation!

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And today is another exciting day for Kobo and readers around the world with the launch of our new Kobo Vox eReader, an amazing value at $199.99.

Remember, we just launched our world class Kobo Touch a few months ago! Our family is growing!

We’ve expanded our family of eReaders with the Kobo Vox, an eReader with the most amazing vivid color display that lets you read books, newspapers, magazines as well as browse the internet, connect with friends, access email, listen to music, watch movies, play games and access over 15,000 free apps!

You can pre-order today, and we start shipping on October 28th! (Somebody’s birthday)

Named from the Latin “Vox Populi” or voice of the people, the Kobo Vox enables readers to start conversations with other readers, and discover new books and authors through their social network. We’ve taken our #1 ranked Android reading experience and made it even better, wrapped it in a cool new design with some hot colors. Kobo Vox comes with Reading Life – our social platform, and our recent innovation of Kobo Pulse – making it the world’s first social eReader. The screen is a gorgeous 7inch FFS+ display – the same tech used in airplane cockpits – which makes it great for reading indoors and out. We have a whole new color & enhanced book experience with rich color content for all ages – comics, travel guides, cookbooks, even children books that read to you. You can experience so much more with Kobo Vox – it’s got preloaded apps for magazines, newspapers, music, social networks, games, a dictionary, an appstore, and of course, email and web browsing.

All this built on top of our founding principle here at Kobo – Freedom of Choice. We’ve always believed that you should be able to download a book and read it on any device, even a competing eReader. Now we extend this with Kobo Vox built on open Android 2.3, the open web, 8GB of storage expandable with a micro-SD slot and thousands of apps.

We’re very excited with this major milestone in our awesome adventure to bring eReading to the world. Even better, we’ve been able to bring this to our customers at the low price of $199.99. Pre-orders start today, and we’ll be shipping on the 28th, and taking Kobo Vox around the planet.

Check it out / Learn More at: http://www.kobobooks.com/kobovox

Mike Serbinis
CEO

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KOBO CONTINUES GLOBAL EXPANSION;
PARTNERS WITH FNAC – #1 BOOK RETAILER IN FRANCE

FNAC SELECTS KOBO TO DELIVER A BEST IN CLASS EREADING EXPERIENCE TO FRENCH CONSUMERS;
LARGEST CATALOGUE OF EBOOKS IN FRANCE

TORONTO – Oct 10, 2011 — Kobo, a global leader in eReading with 5 million readers in over 100 countries worldwide, has expanded its international footprint by partnering with #1 book retailer in France, FNAC.  FNAC has chosen Kobo to deliver a superior eReading experience to their customers, leveraging the Kobo eReading platform, one of the largest global catalogues in the world, top rated apps for any device, and Kobo’s leading selection of eReaders.

Launching to market within the fourth quarter of 2011, in 81 stores in France and online with Fnac.com, this partnership will cement Kobo and FNAC as the popular eReading platform of choice within the French marketplace. For the launch FNAC will have eReading experts on hand, to give personalised in-store Kobo demonstrations and to introduce and educate their customers to eReading and Kobo.

“Partnering with leading bookseller in France, FNAC, brings Kobo closer to our vision of delivering the best eReading experience to more readers, on any device, in more countries around the world,” said Michael Serbinis, CEO, Kobo, Inc. “We believe our launch into France as well as our upcoming entries into Spain, Italy and the Netherlands will be embraced by the European eReading community, as people start eReading, building their lifetime digital libraries, and reading freely across multiple devices.”

“A leading retailer of technology, leisure and cultural products, Fnac is also the number 1 book retailer in France, selling more than 50 million print books each year.” said Alexandre Bompard, CEO, Fnac . “Like Kobo, Fnac is passionate about reading and about the opportunity ebooks offer to the consumers. We are very excited to move a step forward and partner with Kobo, by bringing “Kobo by Fnac” innovative ereading solution to the French market. Our common objective is to offer a top notch solution and the largest ebook catalog in order to meet French customer expectations and lead the ebook market in France.”

LARGEST GLOBAL eBOOKSTORE

In addition to its global store, Kobo already offers stores in the US, Canada, Germany (localised), UK, Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong.  The Kobo store offers a selection of over 2.5 million eBooks, newspapers and magazines with bestselling titles, the hottest new releases, thrillers, romance and over a million free books.

Kobo’s European stores offer customers a rich assortment of local content, merchandised to the tastes and preferences of readers across Europe, Kobo has partnered with European publishers to offer a wide range of titles.  With this launch, FNAC will deliver a large content catalogue, making it the largest eBookstore in France – the new store will feature the latest releases and bestsellers from popular French authors.

Since its launch in 2009, Kobo has been dedicated to an open cloud-based platform, enabling users to read on any device, and with open standards that give users the freedom to build their lifetime libraries as they choose.

LEADING eREADING DEVICES AND FREE EREADING APPS

Kobo has developed a line of top selling eReaders, are distributed in leading booksellers, consumer electronics retailers and mass merchants around the world such as, Best Buy, Target, Indigo Books, Walmart, Collins, Whitcoull’s, and now expanding to retailers in the European market.

As part of the partnership Kobo will develop free eReading French language apps for iPhone®, iPad®, iPod touch® and Android™, and PlayBook™. The apps will bring a next-generation reading experience to users.  FNAC customers will be able to access their library and read across devices, French-language best sellers, the hottest new releases and classics.

In addition to delivering a complete ecosystem of content, apps, and eReaders  – Kobo will also offer a localized version of popular social program – Reading Life under the Kobo by FNAC brand.  Reading Life is a leading, industry-first social experience that lets passionate readers track and share their love of reading.   With Reading Life, users can connect with friends or book clubs and discuss their favorite books on Facebook, they can track their statistics which provide a tally of their library and reading activity – an insightful way for users to learn about their reading habits. Plus, user can earn awards – just for spending time reading.

About Kobo, Inc.

Kobo is a global eReading service with more than 2.5 million eBooks, magazines and newspapers – one of the largest eReading catalogues in the world.  Kobo believes consumers should have the freedom to read any book on any device and has attracted millions of readers from over 100 countries across the globe.  Kobo has top ranked eReading applications for iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows and MacOS, and is the eReading application of choice for leading tablet OEMs.  The Kobo Wireless eReader and the new Kobo eReader Touch Edition are  available at leading retailers, including Indigo, Walmart, Best Buy, Target, and WH Smith.  Kobo’s innovative Reading Life is an industry-first comprehensive social eReading experience – Kobo users can earn awards simply for time spent reading and encouraging others.  Kobo is backed by majority shareholder Indigo Books & Music Inc, Cheung Kong Holdings, and institutional investors.

About Fnac
Fnac, a subsidiary of PPR, is the leading retailer of leisure and technology products in France. It operates 153 stores (the 30th of september 2011): 82 in France and 71 elsewhere in the world (Belgium, Brazil, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Switzerland). Its www.fnac.com <http://www.fnac.com>  website is one of the foremost BtoC e-commerce sites in France in terms of the public it reaches, with an average of 750,000 unique visitors daily. Fnac employs more than 15,000 people and reported €4,473 million in sales in 2010.

# # #

iPad, iPhone and iPod touch are registered trademarks of Apple, Inc. App Store is a service mark of Apple, Inc.  Android is a trademark of Google Inc. BlackBerry is a registered trademark of Research In Motion.  PlayBook and BlackBerry App World are trademarks of Research In Motion.

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Whether you are an avid reader or a student, with the newest update for Kobo eReader Touch v1.9.12 and Kobo Desktop v2.1.3 you will look forward to more eReading with your Kobo Touch.

Download the new Kobo Touch software v 1.9.12 today and experience the following features:

Make annotations! Take notes on your Kobo Touch while you read.

Browse and edit annotations! With the handy annotations list you can now browse and edit all of your previously created notes.

Customize your page turn! Don’t get stuck with just one way of turning your pages; you can customize where you tap/swipe on your screen to page forward, page back, or bring up the Reading Menu.

Download the new Kobo Desktop Version 2.1.3 and experience these new features:

Make annotations! Take notes on your Kobo Desktop Application while you read.

Browse and edit annotations! Easily browse and edit your notes with the annotations list.

Sync your Kobo Touch eReader via WiFi or through your Kobo Desktop to automatically update your firmware, or download Kobo Desktop Application 2.1.3 by clicking here>>