Bookshop.org says Kobo support is coming this year. Again.
Andy Hunter, the company's founder and chief executive, confirmed the timeline in an email this week after his team quietly rewrote the relevant web page — swapping "sometime in the future" for "later this year." The integration was supposed to launch in 2025. Then 2026. Then the language vanished entirely. Now it's back, vaguer than ever.
Forgive the skepticism.
Kobo eReaders, sold by Japanese giant Rakuten, have long carried a reputation as the indie-friendly alternative to Amazon's Kindle. That reputation is stale. The mechanism that made it true — indie bookshops embedding Kobo storefronts on their own websites — largely collapsed years ago. A handful of shops still maintain the arrangement. Most don't. I've tried buying e-books for my own Kobo from three beloved local bookstores in the past month. Zero succeeded.
Readers who want e-ink screens, weeks of battery life, and glare-free outdoor reading — and who also want their money to reach independent booksellers — are stuck. They can buy DRM-free titles from niche publishers. They can borrow library books via OverDrive. They cannot walk into their neighborhood shop's digital aisle and buy the new bestseller.
Bookshop.org was supposed to fix that.
Hunter acknowledges the holdup spanned both business and engineering. "It took us some time to hammer out the business terms and allocate the necessary engineering resources," he said. Translation: negotiating DRM requirements with publishers and Kobo proved harder than expected, and the engineering team was busy elsewhere.
Where? The mobile app. Bookshop.org's iOS and Android e-reader app launched roughly 15 months ago and has consumed the team's attention since. That app works. It sells e-books. It splits revenue with bookshops. But it runs on phones and tablets — devices that defeat the very reasons people buy dedicated e-readers.
Hunter says engineering focus is now "being returned to Kobo support." The business terms are settled. The code is not.
This is not the first time Bookshop.org has set a target it missed. The company built its name on speed: launching in early 2020 as pandemic lockdowns crushed physical retail, it offered indie shops a fulfillment backbone and a revenue share that Amazon would never match. That was genuine innovation.
E-books were always the harder problem. Publishers impose DRM. Kobo controls the hardware. Bookshop.org controls neither. Any integration requires three-way coordination — publisher licenses, Kobo's device firmware, Bookshop.org's storefront — each with veto power.
The company knew this when it announced 2025. It knew it when it pushed to 2026. It knew it when it erased the date.
Hunter's phrasing is careful: "We have recently settled on business terms with Kobo, and we are confident the collaboration is going to happen, but can't promise a specific launch date until the engineering work is further along."
Read that again. Confident it will happen. No date. Engineering not far enough along.
In software, that phrase often means quarters, not months. The DRM handshake alone — encrypting files per publisher specs, delivering them to Kobo's cloud, syncing licenses to devices — is a non-trivial build. Testing across Kobo's device lineup adds more time. Certification processes add more.
If the engineering team only recently pivoted back from the mobile app, a 2024 launch is optimistic. A 2025 launch is plausible. Anything beyond that breaks faith entirely.
Independent bookshops lose every day this drags on. Readers who want e-books default to Kindle because it works. They default to Kobo's own store because it's there. They don't wait for a partnership that's been "coming soon" for years.
Bookshop.org's physical-book business thrives. Its affiliate program sends millions to shops. But the e-book gap is a strategic vulnerability. Amazon owns the dominant e-reader and the dominant e-book store. Kobo is the only viable hardware alternative. If Bookshop.org cannot bridge that gap, the Indie alternative remains incomplete — a physical-store savior with no digital counterpart.
Don't buy a Kobo expecting Bookshop.org integration this holiday season. Don't buy one expecting it next spring. Buy a Kobo if you value the hardware, accept Rakuten's store, and supplement with DRM-free purchases and library loans. That's the honest baseline.
If Bookshop.org delivers — truly delivers — it changes the calculus. A Kobo that lets you buy from your local shop's Bookshop.org page, with the same revenue split as a paperback, becomes a statement device. It becomes the only e-reader where every purchase is a political act.
Hunter says both companies want it. The business terms are done. The engineering is the variable.
We've heard "later this year" before. This time, the code has to ship before the credibility runs out completely.