Kobo has suspended usage of the Goodreads API, the Amazon-owned service that it had been using for book reviews and ratings. Kobo's chief content officer Michael Tamblyn confirmed the suspension, telling Good E-Reader the company was "evaluating re-adding the API at some point in the future, but was cryptic on whether it would actually happen or not."
Noting that investing in the Goodreads API "in the long-term for reviews and ratings might be shooting yourself in the foot," Good E-Reader wrote that it might be more effective for Kobo to "develop their own system for user-generated content. It might be slow going at first, but would be the correct business path for long-term sustained growth."
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In related news, using data from MM Research Institute in Tokyo, the New York Times estimated that the e-reader market in Japan is divided into three parts, with Amazon at 38.3%, Kobo at 33% and Sony at 25.5%. Although this is much more evenly divided than in the U.S., the Times's take was that Amazon had bowled over the competition in Japan.
Some 470,000 e-reading devices will be sold in Japan last year and should climb to 520,000 next year, MM Research predicted. By comparison to the U.S., Japan has many fewer e-book titles available. For example, the Japan Kindle store has just 140,000 Japanese-language titles, Kobo has 130,000 and Sony 108,000.
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Some purchasers of e-books during April 1, 2010 and May 21, 2012, have received notices from the retailers of those e-books that they will be eligible for rebates on those purchases as a result of settlements in the Justice Department suit against five major U.S. publishers for collusion related to the agency plan for e-books. Amazon has estimated that customers who bought e-books published by Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Penguin and Macmillan during the period at issue will receive payments of between 73 cents and $3.82 for each book.
For more information, see the official e-book settlement website.