Kobo Books - eBooks & Audiobooks

Absolutely wonderful. I never thought of myself as the type to go digital when it comes to books. I've always been a fan of hard copy...and I still am....but this service has definitely changed my perspective. Their collection is vast, books are very affordable, and good reads I was passionate about getting my hands on were instantly at my fingertips. No wait time....and no worries about where to store incoming collections as your library grows (a bit harder with hard copies).

First of all- I love Kobo and have a Kobo Glo e-reader too. 😘 I just read that some problems with the App may really be problems between iPhone and the Kobo App..which makes sense. Just to report on the App itself as per my own experience, I have some real difficulties. The most important is that I can't close and set as finished an e-book- not in any of the three supposed ways listed on the App! Also while much less troublesome than years past, I too notice that occasionally the book I tap- is not what opens..and I mean even when I try *very* carefully. Some other parts of the App are dysfunctional too, such as the section entitled "Manage Downloads". I have a great many Kobo e-books-yet only about 6-7 are listed here and I can't seem to do anything with them anyway, except perhaps delete them. Secondly, I've read on the App several times, that we should be able to sync what we're reading from our Kobo E-readers, to Kobo on our desktops, to our Kobo Apps and back exactly- so whatever page we are on in an e-book- will open exactly the same for us on whichever device we choose at a given time. However, at least on this particular update, so far, this piece of the App doesn't work for me. I still love that I have the Kobo App, and I use it. I liked the old "themes" and I like the new ones. It would be *great* though, if it worked fully in all the stated ways.

Better than Audible! Very well featured app that has always worked reliably for me. One thing that would make it better is the ability to break up audiobook downloads. This is an option on Overdrive and is really nice for being able to listen to the start of the book while the rest is downloading as well as conserving spaced used on your phone.

I absolutely love this app. I’ve been using it for almost 10 years now. I read a lot, before bed especially, and it can be frustrating to have to keep turning the page myself. I would love to be able to prop my phone up while washing dishes and have an in app timer to turn the page after so many seconds. Of course everyone reads at different speeds so there would need to be multiple settings for the the timer. Maybe even a read aloud function too. I know there are probably reasons why there is not one such as audio book rights. However it could possibly be mitigated by only allowing a certain percentage of a book to be read aloud. It would be so convenient to be reading and then click a button the will read the text aloud for 5-10 minutes while you shower or swap laundry. Then you wouldn’t have to put the book down.

I’ve been using Kobo for a while now in an effort to not give money to some bigger ebook companies. It’s definitely the best reading app alternative that I’ve found. You can change the text colors and size, you can bookmark, and you can adjust the brightness of the screen without changing the brightness for your whole phone. Also if you are reading a preview and buy the whole book, it saves your place and all of you bookmarks and highlights, which is something even the biggest guy doesn’t do. I would give this app 5 stars if the improved the highlighting. When you are trying to highlight something it’s always ends the highlight like two or three letters before you stopped dragging. I wish it would just default to the end of the word. Also highlighting from one page to the next is just impossible. I also hear that it’s hard to get your highlights out if you wanted to import them to another app for doing research.

It's a service that is cheaper than it's competitors however this means you get a crashing app that doesn't always work as you'd expect. When you type in the search query for a book that you know is available on audio book.. It only shows you Ebooks! So you have to go back to the audio book tab, and manually type your search out again.. As it doesn't save SEARCH HISTORY. I'm giving this 4 stars, it deserves 3, but I'm giving it four because I got to read a book for free that I really loved.

The app is great. I like that is has ebooks as well as audiobooks. I primary use it for audiobooks. I think a great addition would be Chromecast support. I'd like the ability to cast my audiobooks over the Chromecast and listen headphone free on a set of larger speakers. Google Home support would be great as well. Hopefully these features will be added in the near future.

Works well with a few exceptions. Would be nice to have a way to search for not completed books by recent or length remaining. Also, when adding a free book to the library the "add" button does not change, so if you miss seeing the brief added bar you're tempted to use the add button again, as the UI buttons often have dead spots inside the colored bar. Otherwise the app does just fine.

I am an avid reader, and love audio books. This app is simple to use, the online list of books is inexhaustible, and to top it all off, they have great, great deals on premium audio books. Ive listened to hundreds of hours at this point, but I have encountered a problem. Randomly, my books have begun to stop playing, and I get this message “something went wrong, please try again”. Which... for an app where I have products that I BOUGHT is very discouraging. So I went to their help line at the site, and did the recommended actions- Clear local history, log out, log back in. Which works, but A) It’s annoying to re-download my books and B) the problem comes back after about 5 hours of listening. Now, again I say that this is an AMAZING app for listening and reading books. Really cant beat the price on their audio books bundle option. But what brought me to write the review was the hopes that the developers see my issue and can fix it! Im changing to 5 stars if an update comes out in the future addressing my issues. Thank you for reading, and I hope you have great adventures in many books to come!

Was once good....now fonts are too small to be easily readable, even with font size set to max. (Running latest version of app on Samsung tab A running android 11.) Thanks for your quick response. Actually, running Android 10 (not 11...that was a typo).. Should be an easy fix though. But may be a recurring problem due to increasing screen resolutions on Android tablets.

I am used to scrolling up and down when I read. I read for a couple of hours every evening and I am now, exclusively, a e-reader. The look of the pages and the setting options are all great. They give you an option to mark your book as finished, which I really like. The ONLY thing I don’t like is the page turning process. You tap right or left to turn the page forward or back. The problem is you tap to move forward and you are back at the beginning of the chapter you just read. There’s no fast forward, you have to Tap to turn each page. Even when I pay very close attention, it’s still happening and I can’t figure out why. I’m a fast reader, I can read at almost 500 words a min... if I can get to the correct page. Even though I really like everything else about this application, I won’t be using it again. It very distracting and just way too much work to just read a book. If anyone knows what I am doing wrong, I’d appreciate feedback. If I can get this resolved, I’ll gladly use this e-reader!

It's a good reader, but the poor design of this app makes it hard to buy a book. Neither the app not the mobile web site allow me to access my payment information. I had to use a PC just to change my credit card. And I shouldn't have to re-enter all the card information when only the expiration date has changed. There ought to be a sane way to edit an exciting card. The shopping aspects of the app are a decade behind where they should be. So lame.