The Kobo Plus e-book subscription service is now available in Singapore and Malaysia with an unlimited serving of more than two million e-books and 300,000 audio books for a monthly fee.
The service, already available in more than 20 countries worldwide, will cost S$9.99 a month in Singapore to read an unlimited number e-books.
Readers can also opt for a S$9.99 plan for unlimited audio books or a S$12.99 service for both e-books and audio books.
In Malaysia, the service costs RM27 for e-books, RM27 for audio books and RM35 for both formats.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean Kobo users no longer have to pay for e-books on their tablets or e-book readers. The two million e-books available on Kobo Plus are just a fraction of the six million that Kobo’s online bookstore offers.
The subscription service offers a different option compared to the traditional e-bookstore, said Michael Tamblyn, president and chief executive officer of Rakuten Kobo, which offers the Kobo e-book service and sells Kobo e-book readers.
Publishers might wish to sell their new bestsellers on an e-bookstore at launch before placing it later into the Kobo Plus catalogue, he told reporters at a launch event in Singapore today.
This means new books, say, some popular bestsellers might not be available on Kobo Plus and users will still have to buy them separately from the Kobo e-book store. Not sure if your favourite books are part of Kobo Plus? The service is can be tried for free for 14 days.
The good news, according to Rakuten Kobo, is that people are more willing to explore and find new books with a subscription service. They try out new books six times more than readers who buy single copies of books.
Kobo currently has its readers equally spread across Asia, the Americas and Europe. In Singapore, the number of active readers grew by 31 per cent in 2024, the company revealed today.
Of course, Kobo e-reader users always have the option of borrowing digital copies of books free from the library using the Overdrive service. It is a key feature for parents getting their kids into the reading habit.
Now, the new Kobo Plus subscription service will compete against rival e-book service, Amazon Kindle, which offers four million books for US$11.99 a month in the United States.
Besides the US, the Kindle Unlimited offering is also available in Canada, Mexico, Britain, Brazil, Japan, India, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Australia.
However, some Singapore users with US Amazon accounts have been able to sign up for the unlimited service, nonetheless.
