This article is part of our Complete Guide to Royalty Management.
Kobo is one of the largest ebook retailers outside of Amazon, with a particularly strong presence in Canada, Australia, and parts of Europe. For publishers who have made the strategic decision to go wide — distributing beyond Amazon exclusively — Kobo is often one of the first channels they add. But getting that sales data into your royalty workflow every month can be surprisingly fiddly, especially when you are dealing with multiple territories and currencies.
Here is exactly how to pull your Kobo sales reports and import them into royalty software without reformatting a thing.
Where to find your Kobo sales reports
Kobo provides sales data through its Kobo Writing Life dashboard. To download your reports:
- Log in at writinglife.kobobooks.com.
- Navigate to the Reporting section.
- Select the date range for the sales period you need.
- Export the report as an Excel or CSV file.
Kobo’s reporting covers all Kobo storefronts worldwide in a single report. Unlike Amazon KDP, which gives you separate files for each marketplace, Kobo consolidates everything into one file. That sounds simpler — and it is, in some ways — but it also means a single file can contain sales from dozens of territories in multiple currencies. If you are managing a catalog with international readership, that one file can be dense.
Understanding Kobo’s multi-territory data
When you open a Kobo sales report, you will see rows spanning every territory where your titles sold during the selected period. Each row includes the storefront, the currency of the sale, the list price, and the publisher’s share after Kobo’s commission.
This multi-territory, multi-currency structure is what makes Kobo data tricky to handle in spreadsheets. A single month’s report might include sales in CAD, USD, EUR, GBP, and AUD — all in the same file. Manually splitting those out for royalty calculations is tedious and error-prone. If you are already wrestling with multi-currency royalties from other distributors, adding Kobo to a spreadsheet workflow only makes it worse.
Kobo promotions and pricing
Kobo runs frequent promotions and daily deals across its storefronts. If your titles participate in these campaigns — or if Kobo price-matches against other retailers — you will see discounted prices reflected in the sales data. This is normal and expected, but it means the revenue per unit can vary significantly from row to row, even for the same title in the same territory.
When you import this data into royalty software, those promotional prices are preserved exactly as Kobo reported them. Your royalty calculations will reflect what was actually earned on each sale, not the standard list price.
Kobo’s payment timeline
Kobo pays publishers on a monthly cycle, typically around 45 days after the end of the sales month. So January sales will usually be paid out in mid-March. This is faster than Ingram’s 90-day delay but slower than some direct-to-publisher platforms.
As with any distributor, it is important to match the correct sales period to the corresponding payment when it arrives. Importing your Kobo sales data promptly — even before payment has landed — keeps your records current and makes reconciliation straightforward once the deposit clears.
Preparing your files for import
The most important rule: download the file and do not edit it. Do not open it in Excel to clean up columns, rename headers, or merge rows. Royalty software that natively supports Kobo’s format expects the raw file exactly as the platform provides it. Any manual edits — even something as minor as re-saving the file — can introduce formatting changes that prevent a clean import.
If you want to rename the file to something more descriptive like “Kobo-Sales-2026-01.xlsx,” that is fine as long as you do not open and modify the contents.
Step-by-step: uploading Kobo sales into Royalties HQ
Royalties HQ natively supports Kobo Writing Life sales reports as one of its built-in file formats. The import process works the same way as any other supported distributor:
- Go to Add New Sales from the main menu.
- Drop your Kobo file into the upload zone (or click to browse).
- Royalties HQ automatically detects the file as a Kobo report. Confirm the file type in the dropdown and click Continue.
- The system validates the contents. If everything checks out, the status shows “Ready to import.”
- Click Import. Each row from the Kobo report becomes a sales line, grouped into one or more sales batches.
Because Kobo files contain territory and currency data, Royalties HQ preserves all of that context through the import. Your Canadian sales stay in CAD, your European sales stay in EUR, and so on. When you later record the publisher income payment from Kobo, the system reconciles each batch against what you actually received.
Kobo is one of the newest additions to Royalties HQ’s library of 12 natively supported file formats. For a full list of supported distributors and detailed upload instructions, see the importing sales data documentation.
Watch out for Kobo and Draft2Digital overlap
This is a common pitfall. Some publishers sell on Kobo directly through Kobo Writing Life, but also use Draft2Digital (D2D) as an aggregator — and D2D distributes to Kobo as one of its retail partners. If you are doing both, the same sales can show up in two different reports: once in your Kobo Writing Life data and again in your D2D data.
Before importing, make sure you are not double-counting. Either sell direct on Kobo and exclude Kobo from your D2D distribution, or distribute through D2D and skip the Kobo Writing Life reports. If you are importing D2D sales, our guide to importing Draft2Digital sales data covers that workflow in detail.
Multi-currency handling
Because Kobo sells across so many territories, a single month’s import can introduce sales in five or more currencies. Royalties HQ handles this automatically — each sales line retains its original currency, and conversion happens at the appropriate point in the royalty run based on the exchange rate you configure.
If currency conversion is a pain point in your current workflow, our deep dive into multi-currency royalties explains how modern royalty software eliminates the manual spreadsheet gymnastics.
Tips for a smooth Kobo import workflow
Download reports as soon as each month closes. Even though payment will not arrive for another 45 days, having the sales data imported early means you can start reviewing numbers and preparing royalty statements ahead of time.
Keep your Kobo Writing Life account details current. If you change your payment method or tax information on Kobo, the reporting format can occasionally shift. Always double-check your first import after making account changes.
Store the original files. Keep a folder of unmodified Kobo exports organized by month. If you ever need to re-import or audit a period, the originals are your source of truth.
Building a complete wide-distribution workflow
Kobo is just one piece of a wider distribution strategy. Most publishers going wide are also importing from Amazon KDP, Ingram, Apple Books, and potentially several aggregators. The goal is a repeatable monthly routine — download from each distributor, upload without reformatting, and let the software handle the rest.
If you are evaluating how Kobo fits into your broader royalty process, download our free guide for a walkthrough of modern royalty workflows. For detailed documentation on Kobo file imports specifically, see the Kobo documentation in our help center.