The other day when I discovered that the Kobo ebook store is now available on my Sony Reader PRS-T2, I found that the setup and Kobo store was a bit confusing. Kobo does things a little differently than Sony, so it takes some getting used to at first.
Now that I’ve got everything figured out, I wanted to put together a video showing how the Kobo store and Kobo ebooks work on Sony Reader devices.
Not all Sony Readers get onboard access to Kobo, just the PRS-T1, PRS-T2, and PRS-T3. There was a firmware update a couple months ago that changed the Reader Store button on the homescreen to Kobo. Then last week the Kobo Bookstore finally started working, despite no announcement being made.
At first I had trouble finding where purchased Kobo ebooks were located. I expected them to automatically show up in the Books section of the PRS-T2 or on the homescreen, but instead they are located in a separate bookshelf labeled “Purchased Content”.
Once you select to download a book from the purchased content section, it will show up on the homescreen in the recently added section as well as in the “Books” bookshelf.
Another problem I had at first was figuring out how to navigate the Kobo Bookstore from the PRS-T2. The Kobo homepage lacks obvious navigation. They really seem to be into dropdown menus lately, so you have to tap the little arrow icon next to where it says Storefront. That brings up the option to select categories.
After selecting a category, you can then sort by sub-categories. There’s also the option to sort by Bestsellers, Price, alphabetically, and date.
Sorting by price is the secret to finding free ebooks since Kobo no longer has a section for them.
Another tip, you have to swipe onscreen as if paging forward or scrolling down to turn pages in the Kobo Bookstore; the page buttons don’t work like they did with the Sony store, probably because Kobo’s ereaders don’t have page buttons.
As mentioned in an earlier article about how to identify ePub ebooks at Kobo, not all of Kobo’s ebooks will work on a Sony Reader. Kobo offers ePub format for most of their ebooks, but some are only available in Kobo’s proprietary Kepub format. One way to tell if an ebook is available in ePub is to select to Save Preview and then go see if the preview works on the Sony Reader. Another way to tell is if the preview shows an ePub option for download when viewing your Kobo library using a web browser.