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W H Smith begins its roll-out of its Kobo store-within-a-store format this week, and will complete the shop remodelling in August.
The UK bookseller and Canadian e-reader retailer is creating sections within 100 WHS stores, with specially-trained staff to advise customers regarding the products. Eight stores will be completed by the end of this week and a further eight next week, with all 100 planned to be in place by the end of August.
Phil Wood, Kobo country manager, said: “I think this is a brilliant move, we have massively increased out floor space to the benefit of W H Smith and ourselves to get people into Kobo reading over summer.”
The stores will have wi-fi to allow customers to download e-books in-store in a similar way to that planned by Waterstones with Amazon’s Kindle e-books. WHS and Kobo announced their exclusive partnership in October last year, with WHS receiving a cut of every e-book downloaded from the Kobo site after an e-reader is bought.