Brief
Kobo returns to Best Buy; ALLi reports Amazon destroying books for AI training
A retail foothold for Kobo in US big-box, and a grim rights story about physical copies being pulped to feed models.
Why it matters. Wide authors get a visible Kobo shelf. Rights-holders get another reason to read the AI-training fine print.
ALLi’s 28 August news roundup paired two stories that do not usually share a sentence. Kobo is back in Best Buy, a physical-retail signal for a platform many wide authors already use. In the same episode Dan Holloway reported claims that Amazon has been tearing and scanning physical books — including scarce out-of-print copies — to train AI systems.
Neither item changes a KDP dashboard overnight. Together they sketch the week’s split personality: more places to be found, and less clarity about what happens to a book once a large platform holds a copy. Primary next step for authors selling wide is to confirm Kobo metadata and series pages before assuming the Best Buy listing helps them.