Waterstones to close ebookstore

UK bookselling chain Waterstones has announced it will stop selling ebooks from its website and will instead send customers to Kobo for digital sales, reports the Bookseller. In a statement on its website, Waterstones said customers would receive an email on 14 June with a ‘personalised link’ to transfer their ebooks to Kobo. Waterstones MD James Daunt said he made the decision to close the company’s ebookstore because Kobo could provide customers with ‘an excellence of service we ourselves are unable to match’. It is understood that Waterstones will receive a percentage of ebook sales when customers are directed from their website to Kobo. In 2015, Waterstones removed Amazon’s Kindle devices from many of its stores due to ‘pitiful’ sales.

Category: International news