I know there’s a lot of controversy right now regarding Amazon’s decision to no longer let you back up your kindle books to any non-kindle devices but that is not the main reason that I decided to swap over to Kobo. Let’s face it, the Kobo isn’t exactly any better in letting you explore outside their ecosystem. We’re basically ‘renting’ books, and we don’t really own them.

The main reason that I decided to opt for a Kobo instead of the Kindle that I’ve used faithfully for years now is because in Canada, you cannot borrow library books on your Kindle. The Kobo has exclusive rights. This year I’ve been reading a LOT of books that I borrowed from the library, both in audiobook and e-book format. I’ve been keeping track of the money I saved, and if you space your requests out, it’s really not so bad. My small library has a lot of popular books (not all of them, but a larger selection than I was expecting). Some of them I’ve been waiting to borrow since December (it’s now almost March) but again if you space them out – not so bad.

Anyway. It might have been chance that I decided on this exact moment to swap over, but the issues with Amazon re: downloads certainly didn’t help the situation, it just wasn’t my only reason.