Kobo Arc Inside Scoop from PBC Speaker Dave Anderson

A few weeks ago the publishing world was aflutter with the latest Kobo tablet launch which introduced the reader-centric Kobo Arcs. Much of the talk centered on whether or not the Kobo Arc would challenge the preeminence of Amazon's Kindle Fire. We wondered the same thing, and reached out to Publishing Business Conference speaker and Kobo VP of Vendor Management, Dave Anderson. Anderson will speak on Tuesday September 24^th at "Ebooks Beyond Our Borders," where you can see him discuss issues relating to the global ebook market.

We asked: What is the main characteristic that sets the Kobo Arcs apart from Amazon's Kindle Fire?

Anderson said: Kobo has become one of the world's fastest growing eReading platforms due to our focus on putting Readers first. The Kobo Arc 10HD, Kobo Arc 7HD and Kobo Arc 7 are the best tablets for readers because they deliver an unparalleled experience focused on them.

Kobo is the first company to truly focus on the reading experience for its tablets on which users can easily curate their ebooks, magazines, and other multimedia using dashboards reminiscent of library shelves - for convenient access to their favorite content. We've introduced Reading Mode, which lets people read distraction-free from email and social media notifications and adjusts lighting settings to make reading easier on the eyes. This mode also enables the device to use less power, in turn maximizing battery life.

Through Kobo's exclusive Reading Life platform, people can get personalized recommendations, reading activity stats, and share reading updates via social media. The platform also supports the newly-introduced Beyond the Book and Collections features.

Beyond the Book allows readers to discover more content related to key subjects within the book they are reading; whether that's discovering Dante's Divine Comedy while reading Dan Brown's Inferno, a Wikipedia page about the Eiffel Tower while reading Edward Rutherford's novel Paris, or curated content about famous New York authors while reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. To share Kobo's own passion for discovering great reading material, Featured Collections are personalized with Kobo's own recommendations in addition to recommendations from authors, publishers and other notable people who are experts in their field.

Kobo boasts a bookstore of 4-million titles across 68 languages - from bestselling books and magazines, to colorful kids content. The Kobo Kids Store gives kids a head start with digital reading, encouraging them to read more, any time, any place. Parents have full control over kids' accounts, setting spending allowances or selecting books for them to read. They can also ensure search settings are focused on age-appropriate books and set reading goals for their kids and track progress with reading stats. And with the best titles from publishers like Hearst and American Media, Kobo has developed the world's best magazine reading experience with guided reading features that let you seamlessly navigate text and images with a simple touch.

We continue to build on last year's success of the Kobo Arc tablet - recipient of the red dot award beating out 4,662 other products - to further build on the best Android tablet experience for the most passionate readers. We're excited about what our new line of Google-Certified tablets - Kobo Arc 10 HD, Kobo Arc 7 HD and Kobo Arc 7 - will bring to Kobo fans around the world.