Kobo opening its platform up to more authors

Kobo, the folks behind the Kobo eReaders, has decided t expand its services, by allowing authors to submit their own books to the Kobo eBook store. In a recent interview, Kobo CEO talks about the eBook self-publishing service. The service will be simple to use. All users have to do is upload their work in TXT, RTF, or DOC and Kobo will convert it into an EPUB file for them and put it up for sale. Kobo will even help writers with the marketing of the titles, to help them push the book out to a wider audience.

Though it wasn’t mentioned, Good eReader foresees Kobo taking a 15-30% cut from the sale of each book on their eBook store, which seems to be the going rate for e-stores nowadays. While Kobo might not be as big as Amazon, it has an audience out of North America – something Amazon hasn’t quite dominated yet. Nevertheless, it’s great to see another outlet for independent authors to distribute their works, so that they can make a living off writing. Watch the video interview Good eReader had with Kobo’s CEO after the break: