Kobo - my new nemesis...

A few weeks ago, I saw a Humble Bundle with a series of books by Terry Brooks. I downloaded a sample of the first book of the series and was interested enough to read more. As with every Humble Bundle I've bought, the deal is extremely good. I saw the warning that the books were on another site, Kobo, and headed over there to check things out.

And everything seemed fine. I've been out of the loop for a while, so I'd never heard of Kobo or the new (?) Kobo reader. To me, it sounded like a Nook, where you can only read those things on that device. It's why I never purchased a Nook. But! The website said you could use a free Adobe program to change the files into a different format and then put them on other devices. Cool!

So I was in. Got my Bundle and claimed my books. Went to download one and...nothing. It wouldn't open, and I couldn't get anything to happen. I used the Adobe program mentioned, but it wouldn't recognize my device (I have older Kindles), so that was a problem. Upon searching, it seems the program hasn't been recognizing Kindles for at least four years. I wasn't giving up yet, though.

My next step was to take my Kindle Fire and try to download the Kobo app. My Kindle would not download that app. It wouldn't even pretend to try. I even tried to use Google Play to try and download it there. Didn't work. My husband messed around with it, even trying to push back the OS. He was able to get Google Play, but not the app. It was at that moment, I raised the white flag. Between my husband and myself, we had wasted waaay too much time on this.

So, my options boiled down to reading these books on my phone or my laptop. My phone is too small for my old self, and my laptop is too large to lounge around comfortably with. Or I could buy a Kobo! Pass. I'm peeved now. It all sounded so simple at first, and it turned into a frustrating exercise.

I realize this is probably my "old man yells at cloud" moment. I'll have more. But maybe I'll save one person from going through this same thing. If you have older Kindles and are believing you'll get Kobo books to work on them, look a little deeper. Make sure your device will connect to the program. Or just avoid the site. That's what I'll be doing in the future. I've gotten books from other sites before, Coachwhip to name one, and never had an issue getting it to work. Circumstances were just not in my favor this time.