How to publish on Kobo Writing Life: going wide beyond Amazon

Kobo Writing Life is the self-publishing arm of Rakuten Kobo, and it is the natural first stop for authors going wide beyond Amazon: one upload reaches Kobo's own storefronts plus the retail partners around them, with no exclusivity asked. Every claim below comes from Kobo's own pages, fetched and read for this guide; where a number is not on one of those pages, it does not appear here. The Amazon half of a wide launch is how to publish on Amazon KDP; print and bookstore distribution is how to publish on IngramSpark; the US chain's platform is how to publish on Barnes & Noble Press.

What Kobo Writing Life is

Kobo's own description is direct: "We're Rakuten Kobo's self-publishing platform, favoured by independent authors all over the world." The product list on the same page is short: "Self-publish your own eBooks and audiobooks. If you like, distribute to public libraries through OverDrive, or add your books to Kobo Plus, our non-exclusive subscription platform." Audiobooks are a first-class format: "We provide the ability for our authors to upload their audiobooks directly through the Kobo Writing Life dashboard."

The exclusivity position is stated twice, plainly: "We'll never ask you for exclusivity, so you're free to self-publish anywhere else", and "That means you can publish with us and on any other platform at the same time, and earn author royalties from as many sources as you like." That is the structural contrast with KDP Select, whose ebook exclusivity terms are covered in the KDP guide. Language is not a barrier on Kobo's side: "you can self-publish eBooks or audiobooks in virtually any language. The Kobo Writing Life interface is currently available in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese."

Kobo's reach: the countries and stores it serves

The platform page states the reach in one sentence: "Through Kobo's strategic partnerships, your books will be available around the world in the online bookstores of leading retailers in over 190 countries." Two practical facts sit behind that number. First, Kobo operates dedicated storefronts in a set of territories, and "you can choose to set custom prices for the other territories where we have a dedicated storefront." Second, "territories that do not have a specified Kobo storefront (e.g. Hungary and Egypt) access the Worldwide Kobo storefront", so worldwide rights give those readers the worldwide store rather than a local one. The dashboard reports where sales happen: "Use the Map View to see where your sales are coming from."

How to publish an ebook on Kobo Writing Life

The help centre's step-by-step guide breaks publishing into five steps, and one gate comes before anything else: bank details. In Kobo's words, "you will not be able to publish your book until we have these details - we cannot sell your books unless we have a way to pay you."

The upload itself is metadata first. The book's detail screen takes title, subtitle, series name and number, author names (a pen name goes here, exactly as it should appear in the store), and the synopsis, which is the product-page copy whose craft is how to write a book blurb. Further fields cover publisher name, imprint, publication date, the required release date, language and public-domain status. The eISBN field has a forgiving rule: "If you do not have an ISBN, we will automatically assign one." Kobo also recommends using the full category allowance: "We recommend selecting all three categories for each book to ensure that customers who are browsing through our store have a better chance of finding your titles."

Two files finish the setup. The cover uploads as a .jpg or .png file, with the recommendation that "your image should be 300 DPI and no larger than 5 MB"; the design itself is how to design a book cover. The interior can arrive as any of "DOC and DOCX, ODT, ePub, MOBI", because "If your file is not already in an ePub file format, we'll automatically convert it for you." A DRM toggle lets you switch copy protection on or off per book, geographic rights can be worldwide or territory by territory, and the Rights and Distribution tab is also where the Kobo Plus and OverDrive opt-ins live. Then the price, then Publish.

Kobo royalty rates: 70% at the threshold, 45% and 20% below it

The earnings page states the tiers exactly. Top tier: "For original works, you will receive 70% of the list price for the book (the price the customer pays, not including taxes) for each copy of the book that is sold, provided the price is greater than or equal to" a per-currency threshold list that begins "$2.99 USD" and continues through £1.99 GBP, $2.99 CAD, $2.99 AUD and €1.99 EUR into local equivalents in the other listed currencies. Under it: "For original works priced below this threshold, you will receive 45% of the list price." And a separate rule for old work: "For books that are a part of the public domain, you will receive 20% of the list price."

Audiobooks pay on their own schedule: "For Audio works, you will receive 32% of the list price for subscription token purchases. For a-la-carte purchases, you will receive 45% of the list price" at or above the same thresholds, and 35% below them.

Pricing tools live in the dashboard. You set a default currency first, then prices per storefront; Kobo's own advice is to "adjust the price to the nearest 0.99 in the major English-speaking markets to align with pricing trends". Sale scheduling is built in: "You can set up either a permanent price change or a temporary sale price for a future date", with one limit, "you can only schedule one promo price at a time."

Kobo Plus: what the subscription service is and how it pays

"Kobo Plus is Kobo's subscription service that allows subscribers access to books on an all-you-can-read basis." It is available, in Kobo's phrasing, "in strategic territories": the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia sit on a list that runs from Argentina and Belgium through the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden to Taiwan. Enrollment is per book and per territory: "Kobo Writing Life authors can opt their books into Kobo Plus via the Rights and Distribution tab in their KWL Dashboard", choosing all available territories or specific countries, with "no exclusivity" required.

Payment is by reading time, not by sale: "Your payments for Kobo Plus are based on the amount of time that subscribers spent reading your titles in a given month." Each month Kobo divides total subscription revenue by total minutes read to fix a per-minute value, and "The payment rate for authors on KWL is 60%." Reports arrive in blocks: "In our sales reports, we report minutes read in measures of 300 minutes." The current model pays for attention as it happens: authors "will be paid for every minute read or listened, including re-reads, and even if a reader reads less than 10% of the book."

Kobo's own account of the economics is favorable, and it is the platform's, recorded here as theirs: for opted-in authors, "Kobo Plus reads have generated additional income on top of those strong a la carte sales", and the service "tends to give backlist titles a boost". The exit is always open: it is "easy to opt out of Kobo Plus, or out of specific territories in which Kobo Plus operates", and "Opting out will in no way impede readers from buying your books a la carte."

Promotions and library sales on Kobo

The promotions tool is a dashboard tab: it "gives you the opportunity to submit titles directly to our merchandisers for promotional opportunities", and "Our merchandising team will approve or decline the title for the promotion." The step-by-step guide adds the language scope: "Kobo's promotions tool is available for English-language books. Please contact us if you would like to be considered." Cost is the part to read before submitting: "Due to the high demand for promotional space, most of the promotions will include some sort of charge, either as a flat fee or as a percentage of margin", and for percentage sales "The cost of participating in these promotions is 10% in additional royalties retained by Kobo", with the promo-code discount deducted on top. Kobo also notes that "we typically only accept one title from a single author for each sale."

Libraries are the quieter channel. Opt a title into OverDrive from the same tab and "you get paid 50% of the library price you set, and you don't have to pay an aggregator fee." Under the regular one book, one checkout model a library pays the full library price; there is also a cost-per-checkout option in which "they can also pay 10% of your library price to allow it to be checked out just once", typically when a reader has asked for the book.

Print books: not part of Kobo Writing Life

No page fetched for this guide offers a print option. Kobo's platform summary names two formats, ebooks and audiobooks, and every Kobo Writing Life page read here stops there, so this guide describes no print program. Authors who need paper use other services: how to publish on Amazon KDP for Amazon print and how to publish on IngramSpark for bookstores and libraries.

Getting paid

"You will receive your payment 45 days after the end of each monthly period provided you have met a minimum threshold of $50 CAD." The threshold pools everything together: "Sales from your ebooks and audiobooks in all countries are amalgamated to reach the payment threshold. This includes your earnings made through regular à la carte sales, Kobo Plus minutes read, library sales, and sales made through our global distribution partners." Payment goes to your bank: "Your money is sent directly to your bank."

Who should publish on Kobo Writing Life

Kobo Writing Life fits three plans. The wide publisher, who keeps KDP for Amazon and adds every non-Amazon store it can reach, which is exactly what Kobo's non-exclusivity invites. The international writer, working in virtually any language for readers the US stores under-serve, who gets per-storefront pricing and a sales map by country. And the backlist manager, who can put older series entries into Kobo Plus territories and libraries without pulling them from anywhere else. What it does not fit is a print plan; the route decision as a whole is publishing paths, and paper belongs to the print guides linked above. Compressed: open the account, enter bank details before anything else, price at the $2.99 tier where the market allows, add currencies per storefront, decide Kobo Plus territory by territory, opt into OverDrive, and read a promotion's costs before submitting to it.