Walmart’s eBookstore is Launching Today

This content has been archived. It may no longer be accurate or relevant.

Nate Hoffhelder has an announcement on The Digital Reader about Walmart opening an ebookstore today:

Walmart is in the process of setting up new ebook sections in the book departments of its stores, Kobo has let slip a promo video for “Walmart eBooks”, and multiple references have been found in Walmart’s help pages.

While there is no sign of the Walmart eBook apps, I did report a few weeks ago in an exclusive scoop that this would launch on the 21st, and here it is.

Walmart is going to be selling ebooks both on its site and in stores. The ebookstore will be located at www.walmart.com/ebooks when it goes live, and it will be managed by Kobo and supported via a subdomain on Kobo’s website.

. . . .

Walmart will sell just one Kobo model in stores at launch, the $99 Kobo Aura. (While the ebook display has clamps for two devices, the second one is sized for a tablet and has a label that mentions the ebook app, not a Kobo device.)

I know there’s a report that Walmart will sell 3 models, but there is just the one card and one price tag for the one model.

Link to the rest at The Digital Reader

PG went to www.walmart.com/ebooks which redirected to https://www.walmart.com/cp/books/3920, which, in PG’s breath-taking, stunning and astounding opinion, is a total mess.

It strikes PG as looking like a class project from a 100-level college web development course about three weeks into the semester. The course title is something like, “Beginning Web Development for Art History Majors.”

24 thoughts on “Walmart’s eBookstore is Launching Today”

  1. I had the opposite reaction. It seemed a simple, easy to navigate site. It reminded me of scanning the face-out sections in B&N. I agree it lacked much of the color other sites have. In many ways, it looks like Walmart told that 101 class to copy Amazon’s book page.

    As in most all things, tastes and preferences vary.

    • I agree. This is Walmart’s print book section, and it’s been around for quite a while. Will be interesting to see how pages might change when the ebooks do start up.

  2. If you read the article at Nate’s, you’ll find the thing isn’t ready for prime time. It hasn’t actually launched.
    So it’s a vaporware preannouncement that says that either:

    – they missed their target date of back-to-school sales or…
    – they hope to have a working ebook web store someday or…
    – both

    Most likely someone out there got overly enthusiastic over the prospect of somebody, anybody, taking on Amazon.

    For now, they’re just selling dead tree pulp, same as before.

  3. This article has a little more information on this topic -https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/here-is-everything-you-need-to-know-about-kobo-at-walmart-in-the-us

    • Actually, I take that back. They appear to be a much better deal, even if you have Prime.

      Try this.

      Search both sites for “everything you need to ace”. You will see matches for 5 subject specific books aimed at middle schoolers.

      The price at Walmart appears to be about $4 less than at Amazon, with $4 shipping, so you might think it’s a wash.

      BUT, if you add all 5 items to a cart at Walmart, the shipping will only go up incrementally, whereas at Amazon that $4 shipping is “baked into” the price, irrespective of Prime.

  4. Last I checked, Walmart still had a brain-dead search function: an “OR” instead of an “AND”. In other words, a search on, say, “Karen Myers” returns all “Karen” and all “Myers” hits, rather than the intersection of the two. That makes it effectively useless.

    It’s in good company — half the non-US retail book sites I’ve looked at do the same lame thing. Web-design from 1990 rides again…

  5. Just tried it this morning. I got the ebook site. It gives you an option on the side for ebooks, audio, or hardcopy. Ebook and audio both direct to an ‘ebooks by Rakuten Kobo’. Not having wandered around the Kobo site online before, I’m assuming it’s the same storefront? Either way, looks like it’s working now *pokes more.

  6. Just wandered over this morning and when I clicked the ebooks tab on the side, then searched my name, the books came up…priced in CAD.

    Um…I’m thinking they haven’t quite gotten the results to show up with location in mind.

    • They might now — when I went to http://www.walmart.com/ebooks it redirected to the ebooks site, and the first thing they asked was for me to select a country. By default they used the US flag. Whenever I clicked on a book, it showed me the US price as expected.

      However! I just double checked, using the same link, and opened in a separate tab than the first one. The site didn’t ask about the country, and showed me products not available in US. When I clicked on a book, it asked me to choose what country I wanted to buy from.

      Both tabs are open, and I have two separate experiences in each of them. So, not yet ready for prime time.

  7. When I clicked on your link, I had to click around a bit more to get to the ebooks page, at which point it redirected to kobo. Anything I looked at on the actual Walmart page appeared to all be physical books.

    I also just went directly to kobo.com, and it showed the same site, with a new Walmart-looking logo added to the Kobo logo. So they must have done some merging on both sides.

  8. Ah, at first the lack of e-books made me skip right over this. But now that part of the site is functional. Curious, I’ve now discovered an older Harry Dresden book is on sale, (and promptly went to Amazon to buy it). Also discovered that EM Foner’s EarthCent series is on audio (which I will probably ignore as I’m not yet moved to try audio).

    Best of luck to Kobo, for multiple income streams for writers cannot really be a bad thing. Let them be a nimble and cunning competitor, so that Amazon must always keep its A-Game. Do you not love the smell of capitalism in the morning?

    • So, your excursion to check out the Walmart ebookstore resulted in an added sale for Amazon? 😀
      Can’t say I’m surprised.

      Thank you for your testimony, documenting why Walmart/Kobo has such a tough row to hoe. Don’t forget to get your parking stub validated. 😉

      People have been buying ebooks for over a decade.
      The most desirable customers already have hundreds, thousands of dollars invested in their ecosystem of choice: Amazon, Apple, Nook, Kobo. Expecting them to switch from a satisfactory ecosystem to a new one is a pretty serious reach.

      There is ample evidence going back decades that people invested in a given digital ecosystem (Playstation, iTunes, Nintendo, XBOX, Windows, Mac, etc) do not easily switch to another short of an imminent shutdown. It happens but not in large enough numbers to build a bet the farm on it.

      The time to build a customer base is when the new market is emerging, not a decade later. The only reason Microsoft was able to (barely) wedge into console gaming was the collapse of Sega and the subsequent generational change. Plus the investment of a few billion dollars.

      Absent hordes of Kindle customers defecting for no reason, what Walmart/Kobo is facing is the need to bring in new readers to ebooks, drive casual readers from print to digital, or steal them from other epub vendors.
      That means Nook, Google, and theoretically Apple (which I doubt.)

      None of that is going to impact Amazon’s position.

      The biggest loser is most likely Nook since Nook ereaders are somewhat compatible with the generic Kobo ebooks. But that is coming with or without Walmart.

      • Hah! And also, yes on the ecosystem. I vaguely recall the console days, when Sega was still around, and I think the PlayStation 1 was new. The reasons for switching were:

        1) Killer app: cool games not available on one system. Or sometimes, better versions of a game. There was a controversy for tweens about playing Mortal Kombat on Sega vs. Nintendo, because the former would animate blood with the punches, and the latter used sweat instead of blood. Nintendo’s version was for little kids, Sega’s was for Kids Who Were Not Babies. Even years later, my default assumption is that Nintendo games are meant for small children.

        2) Killer feature: I think PlayStation was the first to allow saved games, a feature I’d always wished for on the Atari and Nintendo systems (and I think Sega).

        There’s nothing like that with ebooks. There’s nothing the Kobo is going to do that my Kindle can’t. And in books, it would be impossible now for there to be such a thing as a “killer author.” Many readers are already trained by the BPH to skip cool authors whose books are overpriced. It makes no difference then to skip authors who are exclusive to a fairly invisible ecosystem — how many people have heard of Kobo?

        That said, I still want Kobo to be viable, because I think there are markets in other countries where Kobo could be competitive with Amazon. In that case it would pay to be part of both ecosystems. But here, Kobo has little chance. I mean, unless news broke that Amazon was funneling profits to build the New Temple of Sacrifices to Moloch. But other than that …

        • If anything, Agency means no store can have an advantage for BPH books so any competitive advantage has to be on other publishers’ books. And the biggest competitive advantage right now is called Kindle Unlimited. Second biggest is Prime.

          Killing interactive epub in the US was the BPH’s biggest gift to Amazon.

          It would be great to see somebody seriously challenge Amazon but in today’s environment not even human sacrifice will weaken them enough to allow it.

          Now, if they were kicking puppies they’d be in trouble.
          But not human sacrifice.

  9. I tried to look up an author name and it took me to a different section of the store (not books). Definitely still needs work…

Comments are closed.