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| Kobo's publishing interface is simple and clean. |
I’ve already published one story on Kobo’s Writing Life. This is my second story on Kobo, and I began at 8:03 p.m. By 8:25 the process was complete.
This included resizing the image. According to Kobo, the best image quality is 900 dpi although 300 dpi is fine. The preferred size conforms to the Kobo reader at 600 x 800, but the important thing is the 3 x 4 ratio. I resized an image that was about 2000 x 3000 to about 1000 x 1400 and we’ll see how that goes.
I also opened up the file and made some small changes while proofreading it, with the Kobo interface open while I did it. It’s a short story of about 3,700 words. That only took a few minutes. The price is set at $1.99, or as low as Kobo will allow by my reading of the terms of service.
The ISBN number is put in the box without hyphens, and I fiddled with that until I figured it out.
I haven’t even downloaded the Kobo desktop reading app. I checked it out in a Nook desktop app, and while the text looks fine, the picture is distorted a bit due to horizontal stretching. It might be a good idea to get that Kobo app and check it out in there.
Neither of the first two books has been published yet, as presumably there is some kind of vetting process for formatting, content, etc.
Other than that, Kobo reps helped me set up the payment information page, and as a Canadian author, I don’t have to worry about W8BENs and tax withholding from the U.S. government.
The whole thing has been clean and easy so far, and the interface for uploading is simple and self-explanatory. Now, getting paid is part of the job, and according to the TOS, Kobo will withhold payment until a threshold of $100.00 is met. After that, it looks like direct deposit for Canadian authors, and hopefully there will be e-mail or postal notifications as well.
Assuming the books are accepted into the catalogue, everything seemed to go very well.
