Have “social” updates ruined the Kobo app?

It’s no secret that Kobo, the e-reading company formerly owned by Indigo Books & Music, is betting big on the “social in-book e-reading experience” to set it apart from competitors such as Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iBookstore.

Kobo made this much clear with the September launch of Kobo Pulse, a package of updates that effectively integrated social media within the company’s e-reader. The new features permit users to connect with other readers online, comment on an ebook’s content, view statistics about a title’s popularity, and post reading updates and passages to Facebook, among other functions. The new capabilities are in addition to Kobo’s long-established Reading Life program.

It seems, though, for some Kobo diehards, the updates have gone too far.

Just a year after naming Kobo’s e-reading iPad app the best on the market, digital publishing and tech blogger Chris Walters has come out swinging against it. In a post on his website, Walters says that, while he used to believe the Kobo app “ahead of the curve,” he now avoids using it altogether. Noting that the changes came about in response to restrictions against in-app purchases Apple began implementing last year, Walters says Kobo’s unrelenting attempts to make e-reading fun and connected have missed the mark and made the app unpleasant to use.

Regardless of whether or not users find the social features cumbersome, Walters’ main complaint is levelled against Kobo’s increasingly aggressive sales tactics. Now when the app is launched, it opens to a page of recommended reads that takes up much of the display screen. Moreover, Walters points out that when you do opt to make a purchase, the process has become much more time consuming and involves multiple website redirections.

Walters ends his post by putting these changes in context. From Booksprung:

Part of me wonders if this is the first sign of the New Face of Kobo, now that it’s been bought up by Rakuten. Software updates don’t happen overnight, so this was likely something Kobo had in the works for a while. Rakuten surely had enough time to kill this update but chose to release it anyway, which is a good sign that this is the way things will work with Kobo from now on. Who knows? By the time summer comes around the Kobo iOS app may be nothing but an impenetrable billboard of book samples, Facebook alerts, infographics, help screens, pop-up windows, slide-out sheets, and “share this” badges.

Has Kobo’s e-reading app gone too far, or are we asking too much of retail-based companies? What can Kobo do to win back Walters and other disgruntled readers?

Canadian literary event roundup: Feb. 3-9

It’s another busy week for literary events. Here’s a sample of what’s going on across the country:

• Dinner and reading with Pico Iyer, Grano, Toronto (Feb. 4, 7:30 p.m., $100)
• Ron Stevens signs Much Ado About Squat, McNally Robinson, Winnipeg (Feb. 4, 2:00 p.m., free)
• Debbie Hanlon and Grant Boland sign The Adventures of Gus & Isaac: Backyard Bullies, Chapters, St. John’s (Feb. 4, 1 p.m., free) and Coles (Feb. 5, 1.p.m., free)
• Lorenzo Reading Series presents an evening with Alexander MacLeod, University of New Brunswick, Saint John (Feb. 6, 7 p.m., free)
• Sue Goyette reads from her poetry collection Outskirts, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax (Feb. 7, 7 p.m., free)
• Kathy Dobson, author of With a Closed Fist, speaks about poverty, Algoma University, Sault Ste. Marie (Feb. 9, 7 p.m., free)
• CBC Canada Reads: True Stories, CBC Broadcast Centre, Toronto (Feb. 6-9, 9a.m., free)
• Susan Dodd discusses her new book, The Ocean Ranger: Remaking the Promise of Oil City, University of King’s College, Halifax (Feb 9., 7 p.m., free)
• David Rotenberg launches his new book, The Placebo Effects, Runnymede Library, Toronto (Feb. 8, 6:30 p.m., free)
• Pivot Readings presents readings with Meira Cook, Dani Couture, and Sarah Pinder, Press Club, Toronto (Feb. 8., 8 p.m.)

Quillblog is looking for photos from literary events across Canada. Send your photos to scflinn@quillandquire.com.

Book links roundup: a guide to literary Tumblrs, unemployment literature, and more

• A guide to literary Tumblrs
• Grim economic times inspire unemployment literature
• Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest turns 50
• Cradling Charlotte Brontë’s teeny-tiny early work
• Torontoist peeks inside the new antiquarian bookshop, Sellers & Newel

Why ebooks in Quebec are a taxing issue

While NPR urges the world to stop the ebook versus print debate, in Quebec, the debate has shifted to how digital titles are taxed, and what constitutes a “real book.”

According to Montreal’s The Gazette, the Quebec government has treated print books as zero-rated for tax purposes since 1996, but ebook sales can still include the 9.5 per cent provincial sales tax.

Robert Hayashi, CEO of the digital publishing advocacy organization eBound Canada, disagrees with the discrepancy. “Just like there is a hardcover (print book) format and a softcover format, ebooks are just another format,” he told the The Gazette. “So if government is not taxing the hardcover book, we believe that government should also not tax the ebook.”

In another Gazette article, Kobo’s vice-president of finance, Daniel Budlovsky, lamented that Quebec consumers who purchase ebooks through Kobo are charged both provincial and federal sales taxes, while those who buy their ebooks through U.S. competitor Amazon pay no sales taxes.

Although Budlovsky said the discrepancy “should be atrociously viewed by the Canadian public,” Kobo isn’t ready to battle the Canadian government to change the tax laws.

“We accept the law for what it is and feel that it should be changed but that is a long and bureaucratic process,” Budlovsky said. “We work in a … fast-moving industry where we need to stay ahead of the competition by working on things that are under our control.”

James Ivory, Russell Banks among guest speakers for TIFF’s Books on Film series

James Ivory will discuss his adaptation of E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End on June 18.

When the Toronto International Film Festival and Random House of Canada host a book club, the guest speakers are bound to be impressive.

The second season of TIFF’s Books on Film series, which screens cinematic adaptations of literary texts followed by discussion, is drawing big names from both the publishing and film industries.

Shane Smith, director of public programs for TIFF, says festival staff worked closely with the series host, CBC Radio’s Eleanor Wachtel, to determine the lineup and guest speakers. “Eleanor’s well known for her work in literature, but she’s a big film buff as well, and has an encyclopedic knowledge of film,” says Smith.

In determining this year’s program, Smith says, “We looked at films we’d loved. Sometimes we’d drop a film and a book because we couldn’t get the right guest. Other times, the guest led the choice of film.”

Russell Banks, who will discuss the Academy Award–winning adaptation of his novel Affliction on Feb. 27, was “on our list from the get-go,” says Smith. “We’re thrilled we can get the book, get the film, and get him at the same place.”

Other guests include filmmaker Atom Egoyan on his adaptation of William Trevor’s novel Felicia’s Journey (Feb. 6); feminist film critic and author Molly Haskell on Cary Fukunaga’s version of Charlotte Brontë’s classic Jane Eyre (March 26); and author Will Aitken on Luchino Visconti’s adaption of Thomas Mann’s novella Death in Venice (April 16).

On May 14, Knopf Random Canada executive vice-president and publisher Louise Dennys will provide context for the 1949 thriller The Third Man, written by Dennys’ uncle, Graham Greene, and on June 18, James Ivory, director of some of contemporary cinema’s most celebrated literary adaptations, will discuss E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End.

Book links roundup: Largehearted Boy celebrates 10 years, the greatest books of all time, and more

• Largehearted Boy celebrates 10 years of book and music blogging at Brooklyn’s Word Bookstore
• The Atlantic lists greatest books of all time as voted by 125 famous authors
• J.D. Salinger’s Franny, Graham Greene’s Maurice Bendrix, and Zadie Smith’s Samad Iqbal named top literary believers
• Trillium Award celebrates 25 years with a voting contest for readers
• League of Canadian Poets announces P.K. Page Trust Fund and benefit readings

Wislawa Szymborska dead at 88

Poland’s Wislawa Szymborska, the woman the Nobel Prize committee called the “Mozart of poetry,” died in her hometown of Krakow on Wednesday.

From the Washington Post:

She has been called both deeply political and playful, a poet who used humor in unforeseen ways. Her verse, seemingly simple, was subtle, deep and often hauntingly beautiful. She used simple objects and detailed observation to reflect on larger truths, often using everyday images — an onion, a cat wandering in an empty apartment, an old fan in a museum — to reflect on grand topics such as love, death and passing time.

Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said on Twitter that her death was an “irreparable loss to Poland’s culture.”

The Nobel Prize citation indicated that she was given the award “for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality.” American poet Robert Haas said of her writing, “She’s a very pure poet and an unexpected choice because she writes poetry. There are no essays on man’s fate. There are no novels or theater. She’s lived in Krakow quietly most of her life and produced these marvelous, very simple poems.”

Szymborska, a lifelong smoker, succumbed to lung cancer at the age of 88.

Book links roundup: Natalie Portman takes on Judith Krantz, beautiful bookstores, and more

• Natalie Portman is behind a new TV miniseries based on Judith Krantz’s steamy novel Scruples
• Take a peek at 20 of the most beautiful bookstores in the world
• The New York Times reports Barnes and Noble won’t stock Amazon-published titles
• Collette, Dorothy Parker, and Anaïs Nin among 10 legendary bad-ass girls of literature
• The Lambda Literary Awards are set for June 4, 2012, at City University of New York

Book events slideshow: Canada Reads, Ottawa’s first all-women’s poetry slam championship, and more

Every Tuesday Quillblog rounds up photos of book-related events across Canada. If you would like your event photos to be considered for our weekly feature, email scflinn@quillandquire.com.

Click on the thumbnails to see what’s been happening around the country:

Guy Delisle wins gold at French comic book awards

Guy Delisle’s latest graphic novel, Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City, has been named best comic book of the year at the 39th Angoulême International Comics Festival. The Quebec-born artist was presented with the Fauve d’Or on Sunday as part of the closing festivities at the annual comics festival in the southwest of France, touted as the biggest comics convention in the world.

Delisle’s book, a memoir of the author’s time living in East Jerusalem, titled Chroniques de Jérusalem and published by Éditions Delcourt in France, was selected by the jury from among 58 comics published in French between December 2010 and November 2011. The English-language version of the graphic novel is forthcoming from Drawn & Quarterly in April.