Kobo, the Rakuten-owned e-reading company, has announced that it is to acquire the French digital publishing platform Aquafadas to bolster the breadth of content available on its e-reader devices, for which it claims 10 million users in 190 countries. Terms of the deal remain undisclosed.
The acquisition gives Kobo access to the Aquafadas Digital Publishing System, which the company says will enable it to bring a selection of rich media –- magazines, academic journals, comics, kids’ books and more — to its customers, by providing better content creation tools for publishers.
Aquafadas’s Digital Publishing System offers a complete digital publishing suite — from content design to cross-platform distribution and analytics, and combines content design tools with a “versatile library of ready-to-use apps”, ePub3 export, and a Web reader. Thus enabling publishers to create richly designed content without the need for any coding chops. The Kobo hook up is about bringing distribution directly to that publishing platform.
In related news, Kobo’s self-publishing platform, Kobo Writing Life, is now available in German, French, Italian, Portuguese and Dutch, in addition to English – with several new languages planned “over the coming months”. Since its launch in July, the company says that Kobo Writing Life has doubled month over month, with authors spanning 82 countries, publishing in 17 languages. Its Writing Life self-publishing feature should also benefit from today’s acquisition with better tools.
Kobo is a global eBook retailer backed by Indigo Books & Music, Borders, REDgroup Retail, Cheung Kong (Holdings) Ltd., and other leaders in technology and retail. We believe consumers should be able to read any book, anytime, anywhere, and on the device of their choice
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