For avid readers, a gadget for traveling everywhere with books

NATIONAL Book Store and Kobo execs raise a toast to making e-reading more accesible to avid Filipino readers.

“Feedback has been outstanding,” said National Book Store (NBS) marketing director Miguel Ramos, referring to Kobo, the Canadian e-reading device they recently launched in the market.

“People are really excited about it and sales have been great. After just a few days, we had to reorder because we were so far ahead of projections,” he said.

There are good reasons for the warm reception. With Kobo, NBS is able to give readers the options of (1) buying books that are otherwise not available locally and (2) bringing along a library of a thousand books on a trip around the world, should they so wish.

In addition, rare titles and special interest books that would not be prudent for the store to have physically in stock could also be accessed through Kobo, said NBS purchasing director Xandra Ramos-Padilla. Local titles could also be made available in e-book formats that people could read from a handy gadget, like Kobo.

“We are not stealing customers away [from bookstores],” Kobo’s vice president for business development Todd Humphrey said at the launch. He said they were simply offering an alternative.

“It doesn’t have to be either/or. We are a supplement to the business,” Humphrey said. He added that, having gained the nod of around 11,000 publishers all over the world, Kobo now had 4 million titles in its e-bookstore.

Because they want to make e-reading easy for Filipino readers, Humphrey said, the Kobo website lists book prices in pesos. No international addresses are needed and local credit cards will be accepted.

While e-reading has not yet reached its prime in the country, it is a growing market, with around 3 million Filipinos already reading e-books, according to last year’s readership survey by the National Book Development Board.

“Personal ownership of handheld devices for reading electronic or digital books is at 2 percent, which is equivalent to 1 million Filipinos,” the survey found.

NBS, in fact, started its search for an e-book strategy three years ago, according to Ramos.

“We were not sure what we should do—whether to partner with someone or do it ourselves,” he said. “But we were sure we needed to do something. So we started talking to all the major players and suppliers. The more we talked to people in the industry and the more we met with Kobo, the more we knew that Kobo was the one we should work with. We had a shared vision for making the readers a priority and giving them the best experience possible.”

Selected NBS branches nationwide are now selling the three models of the Kobo e-reader.

The Kobo Touch is a 6-inch e-reader that offers the most natural reading experience. With no back light or front light, it is just a basic device with an antiglare screen and an internal memory of 2 gigabytes that can store up to a thousand books and can be expanded to 32 GB through a micro-SD card. Battery life lasts a month.

Another model is the Kobo Glo, a variation of the Kobo Touch that comes with a front light, allowing users to read their e-books even when room lamps are off at night.

The 7-inch Android multimedia tablet Kobo Arc has a memory of 16 GB and a 10-hour battery life.

BOOKS OR E-BOOKS? Kobo vice president Todd Humphrey says it is not an either/or.

Of course, many avid readers, while welcoming the convenience of e-readers, still prefer the physical reading experience—feeling the texture of every page and catching a whiff of that distinct book paper smell, so well-loved it now comes in wacky perfume scents.

Writer Jizelle de la Rosa, 22, said that while she appreciated the e-reader’s portability and capacity to allow access to multiple books at any given time, “I think anybody who is into reading still appreciates the printed stuff.”

While she could not say if the digital version would be cheaper than the printed copy or ensure more “comfortable” reading, De la Rosa said, “I guess the charm of the e-book is its convenience, more than anything.” Buying books, for instance, is also just a click away.

Padilla quipped that one disadvantage of the digital reader was that “you cannot get authors to sign books on your Kobo. The book signing experience has yet to shift to digital.”