This post is part of a collection of posts related to font tweaking for eBook readers, in particular Kobo devices.
When I got back into reading in 2022 with my first steps into the Cosmere, I did not imagine that I would become a reading fiend and make my way through many books as the years have gone by.
I also ended up owning a bit of an e-reader collection. I’ve owned Kobo, Kindle and Boox devices over the years. My Kindle ownership was brief: after a couple of months, I sold the device but there was one thing that I thought was excellent on Amazon’s device – and that’s the fonts that shipped with the device.
I’ve written about the topic before, but Rakuten Kobo’s default fonts are not as good as they used to be. I understand that the licensing costs may have been a problem. Now that they ship a different selection of fonts with their devices, I think it’s fair to say their default type options are frankly not as good as Kindle’s, which ships with the likes of Caecilia, Palatino and most importantly, the excellent Bookerly .
I am aware that there’s a bunch of people who just download whatever fonts they want, but that’s not something you are legally supposed to do – licensing restrictions apply to commercial fonts (and typefaces ). Bookerly is a serif typeface designed by Dalton Maag, and it’s exclusively licensed to Amazon.
A few years ago, Rakuten got a bunch of fonts made for their brand. It’s notable that these were also created in collaboration with Dalton Maag . As of the release of the Kobo Libra Color, Rakuten Serif is now the default font (superseding Georgia ) for the digital reading experience.