Recently a few days ago, I’ve talked about choosing an e-book store to prevent my books from turning yellow. I’ve went through all the different things they had to offer, downloaded, the kobo app and after awhile out on a sunny day to work, I’ve decided to purchase my very first book. Here’s is what i went through.
Kobo Website- Click for link to website 😀
Out of curiosity, during the part when I downloaded the kobo app on my android phone, everything seemed a little new. At first it looks pretty empty and being the new guy, I was at first lost but things eventually came to place after a bit.
The home screen welcomed me with a simple view of recent activity on the top which actually featured what I had read recently, and the bottom section was divided into library, which is the library books that I’ve downloaded/purchased goes in there.
The reading life section was a cool feature keep track of your reading stats and just beside to it, is the kobo store.
The design didn’t really bother to me, and it wasn’t really my main concern especially for the home screen. I only like that there isn’t a need to scroll.
The store has quite a selection of books, and most of the bestsellers out there are in, at least for my taste. It does have a book that costs at low as $0.99 cents, and a few couple of nice free- ebooks to download, and categorised into different sections, with more subsections in it, and i didn’t have time to explore all the categories because there was just too many genres, some that I’ve never even heard of like ‘steampunk’.
I was more curious about how reading a book would be like on my small screen, so i downloaded a free-ebook to try it out, and the first book i bought was Icefire, by Patty Jensen. It was a short story, and it looked pretty nice. Clicking the next page was as easy as a tap on the side.
I like the fact that there was a highlight button, a place to take notes, and simple things like search and share.I can even highlight a word i don’t know, for example and kobo app automatically searches the web for its meaning. In the right picture, the settings allow me to also scroll through pages, change the text size and font, adjust the apperance, other settings and comment on the pages that will eventually be shared with other readers. (all this did take a bit of exploration to really know what it was.)
Ahah! Share with other readers, adjust the appereance? This is when things get even more interesting.
The appearance section allows me to change settings, between classic white background, to night (for reading at night) and also the sepia, which i prefer to use the most. I was at first using the classic method to read, but eventually my eyes went crooked started to strain even more, so sepia really helped me loosen up.
I’ve tried the night function once while reading my book on my bed lying face up, and it does help read at ease too. The screen simply turns the background black and the words white. This i felt, was a great feature.
Some other features that i felt interesting was that there was notifications to inform you of the activities going on in your reading life.There is also award badged that can be earned like reading at night, or reading a new book, or taking a note in a book. It really got me motivated to want to collect badges, and share them with my friends, and show them how badass i am with books 😀
I can say some of the badges are really cute. The picture on the left showed that I’ve already earned 3 badges, one for joining Kobo(Welcome to reading Life), another for putting a book at my own library(i ❤ my library) and also for reading a new book(Once upon a time)
I’ve now collected 9 badges, see told you i was badass.
After all the days worth of thinking whether or not i should have bought a book, I’ve decided to finally call it a deal (with my other self) and went on to purchase my first book bundle, The Game of Thrones bundle pack from 1-4 , simply because I’ve been told that the book gave more details compared to the show, which is really true. It cost me about $22 dollars plus all the currency change and that to me was a pretty good deal. Instead of having 4 books in my room now, I’ve my books, complete with a search feature, a share feature, and also at the same time see other people comments on the book, likes, dislikes and who’s reading.
No more reading in the dark with a small lamp that i try so hard to read with, and also more space for my room. Just to let you know that I’m doing all this in my mobile phone, and the app is free.
This is really cool video if you’re more into seeing that reading. I find that it’s really such a helpful software that have helped me to read my books online i think it will also do for you.
So if you’re into reading and finding a method to solve your books stacking up, then i can say one of the solutions would be to go for Kobo.
Mobile suffice for now, but Maybe i shall get a kobo Glo e reader soon. 🙂
Thanks for reading!
writinglikeastoner 