This idiot’s guide to the Kobo ereader

This is a lesson on how to do better research, because I did brilliant research on the actual reader, but made a bunch of assumptions regarding the library management side of things, and now I’m less enchanted. I also feel a little foolish for jumping in so quick (if >3 months is considered jumping in quick).

If you ever want to do research on a product, remember this: check out the product’s online customer support. If the product comes with any web-based DIY management tool, don’t assume everything’s going to sync like how it does now with Windows and Macs. I made huge assumptions I didn’t realise I was even making, and now I’m poking around trying to find workarounds. I did find some good software out there that will make life better, though. More later.

After tussling with this baby for about 4 hours, I’ve come up with an initial list of likes and dislikes.

Likes

• e Ink technology
  … is everything they said it was. I love the satin finish. I love how it doesn’t feel like you’re reading from a computer screen. I’d chosen the white Kobo rather than the black one, because I found the white frame to be more reflective and therefore give a seemingly brighter screen for reading. I’ve not regretted that colour choice yet, although the frame might get grimy later.
• The ease of navigation
  One thumb does all: up-down for font size, left right for page turns. You hardly need to touch the side buttons once you’re in the book. But it helps if you’re a right-hander.
• Size and feel
  Small, light, slim, yet not too precious. Great non-slip quilted backing. They ran out of leather cases at Borders yesterday, so I slipped this in my handbag this afternoon and it was just fine.

The reader’s fine, by and large. But then here’s where it all starts to fall over.

Where I’m coming from:

• Live in Australia
• Bought Kobo from Borders
• Kobo came with 100 books pre-installed.

Dislikes

1. Desktop installer
   • Talk about feature-poor!
     • I expected to be able to sync my books from my ereader easily with my computer, but nope.You can explore the Borders online store and once you download stuff, sync those books with your Kobo. Otherwise, forget about having all your books reflected on the desktop application.
     • Which means you can’t even dictate which books you’re reading or finished, using the Borders or Kobo Desktop Application.
     • You can’t even delete the 100 pre-loaded books from your selection, and back up individual titles through the app. This is gob-smackingly basic stuff. And you can’t do it. Just badly, badly done.
   • Installation wasn’t clear.
     • I always judge the user-friendliness of software by asking whether my mother would be able to self-serve her way through an app. But the installation didn’t autoplay like they promised. You had to know to go into the kobo drive, get into the Desktop Installers folder, choose your platform (Windows or Mac), and then double-click on the desktopinstaller app. Most basic users aren’t gonna want to poke around to that extent.
2. Help and tech-support
   Here’s where I started to want to hurl something hard against a brick wall.
   • No search tool within help section
     Honestly, this is so amateur, it hurts my head thinking about it. How can you NOT include a search field for your forums and FAQs! In this day and age!
   • Promises of instruction, with no follow up
     • More than once, I’ve encountered “further instructions below”, and then the writer must have found something shiny because he/she never got back to us about the further instructions, and I’m left wondering what I just missed.
     • The desktop app was the most mystifying. An entire page on their website, dedicated to the wonders of the app and how it can improve your life… and then no further instructions on WHERE to download, and HOW to find it through your Kobo. It was even more baffling coming from someone who has a desktop installer branded Borders. I couldn’t tell if it was the same application on not. (And BTW, the Kobo one has slightly more features than the Borders one. Except I couldn’t download the Kobo one, could I.)
3. The fake “I’m reading” status.
   
   • If you accidentally open a book in Kobo, it’ll categorise that book under the “I’m reading” section. And you can’t get it out until you go to the back of the book and say that you’ve finished it.
   • But if you’re anything like me, what you REALLY want it to be marked as is “unread”. Except you can’t. Because it’s now marked as “finished”. Even if you poke around with code through sqlitebrowser, it’ll still mark it as “finished”. Which is bloody annoying.

Thankfully, there are lots of really clever people on the internet. And I’ve found some help.

The solution:

Junk the Borders / Kobo desktop application. Use Calibre instead.

• Converts ebooks to the format you need through a click of a button.
• Allows you to see what’s on your PC and what’s in your reader.
• Allows you to upload ebooks to your reader easily.
• Allows you to change metadata and tag your books – including retrieving metadata from the web.
• Allows you to change the book cover.

You can still use the the Borders application if you want to easily find and download books, but I think I’m going with Calibre for now.

Change “I’m reading” status

If you want to change status of book from “I’m reading”, download sqlitebrowser and follow these instructions lifted from this forum:

1. Install sqlitebrowser or another sqlite editor.

2. Back up your Kobo’s database.
It’s the file labelled: KoboReader.sqlite.

3. Open the Kobo’s database with sqlitebrowser.

4. Go to the ‘Browse Data’ tab and select the table ‘content’.
This may take a while to load.

You will find a record for each chapter of each book, followed by one for the book as a whole. This last entry is the one that needs editing. The fields ‘BookID’ and ‘BookTitle’ should be empty (unlike the chapters), and the book’s title should be in the ‘Title’ field. You may use the find window to search for this record.

5. Once you have found the book’s entry, set it to be unread.
Set ‘FirstTimeReading’ to ‘true’ and ‘ReadStatus’ to ’0′.

If you want to find all books (and documents) that are in the reading list, search for ‘ReadStatus’ = ’1′.

6. Save the database.

7. Unmount and disconnect your Kobo.
After the Kobo has processed new content, the books should no longer appear in the reading list. If something goes wrong, restore the backup of your database.

I take no responsibility for corrupting your Kobo’s database, but please let me know if anything doesn’t work with these instructions. I have tested them with version 1.4 of the firmware only.

Over and geek out ~ Imogen