On February 26th, Kindle customers will lose the ability to download eBook purchases directly to their PC. If you want to switch to a rival eReader brand in the future, I suggest that you use the soon-to-be discontinued “Download and Transfer via USB” feature to archive your Kindle library.
I wonder if this is at all related to the EU changes to eBook DRM standards, where the standard Kindle Adobe DRM isn’t compliant
I’ve been downloading my books but most of them are DRM so I can’t read them on anything BUT a Kindle. I’ve been thinking about getting another e-reader but I fear I’m trapped.
Just look up Kindle DeDRM, it is easy enough to remove that stuff and then even convert them to epub
My favorite sites for actual ebooks are Humble Bundle and Fantastic. But these are predominantly tech books. No idea where I’d get good fiction in epub today.
I use a library app called Libby to read non torrented books. But I’m not sure if it’s available on the kindle. It’s good to support your local library, even if it’s only digitally
Libby is able to sync with your kindle, and then you just choose “send to Kindle” on your phone when checking a book out and the book will appear in your Kindle library.
https://help.libbyapp.com/en-us/6017.htm
If you have a Kindle, this is 100% the best way to read books.
To all the people who are saying “I’ll just pirate books,” you are aware you can buy eBooks from places that aren’t Amazon, right?
Have a look at https://bookshop.org/ebooks You can buy books/eBooks and support local bookstores that aren’t Barnes & Nobles or Amazon.
I’d suggest you download/archive your Kindle books and then buy your eBooks from elsewhere. You can still load those onto your Kindle.
Saying “I’m going to pirate because one specific website is changing its policy soon,” is pretty stupid.
Addendum: that specific site is dog shit. Imagine thinking you just bought an ebook but instead you bought a lease to some DRM shit that only works on their app.
EPUB or GTFO.
I hear you saying that, but the books I want to buy are never on those sites.
Does that provide epub when baught? Or does it lock you in with their DRM app?
Thanks for asking this, that question made me go look it up.
I found https://bookshop.org/info/ebooks
I thought you could load bookshop.org eBooks onto a Kindle, but it seems they have their own DRM and you need to use their own app…
Some of their books are DRM free, but not all. I thought they all were, but it turns out I was wrong.
So… maybe even bookshop.org isn’t the best option for Kindles.
I guess there really is only one option left…
I went researched a few years ago and concluded that there is no option for writers to be guaranteed “no piracy” and that’s why they prefer having paperbooks. (That is also after brainstorming with a few people to publish my own book if it were…) and those days i was trying to find an important book in electronic format and could not find it anywhere, the paper 10th edition version (which i eventually bought) is like 1000 pages and the e version i found was 200 ish pages summary. So my sad conclusion was that i just need a big’ol scanner at home, just so that i can scan everything that i buy in paper just because i could then keep it personally on my e-reader (and having destroyedbinding of each book i buy lmao)… is that too much to ask… my wife says no… lol
That was amusingly well timed:
I’ve jailbroken every Kindle fire I’ve ever owned, is this something new?
As it should be.
I don’t mind a monopoly on a physical product as long as I can jailbreak it, install my own custom hardware, or modify it however I want.
You don’t mind the harm to consumers and the anti-competitive results of Amazon establishing a monopoly on e-readers? Interesting take…
Amazon even has a monopoly on e-readers?? I thought that was a more evenly-shared market, with Pocketbook being the most popular, while Boox and others have a sizeable part of the pie. Where I am, Kindles aren’t even sold officially, so I don’t see them much.
In the meantime, hackers have just released a new jailbreak and made it a more open platform than ever :^)
I resisted eBooks for years, preferring physical books from the library or new/second hand stores. I got gifted a Kindle from a well meaning relative a few years ago and I have a small collection on there, mainly built up when I was commuting.
This news came just as I am backing up my own data, moving off of the big name Cloud services and going back to open source software. (In confession the convenience of M365 etc won me over so the last 10 or so years I fell into the trap!)
Anyway needless to say my 40(ish) Kindle books quickly got downloaded and archived this week. Thanks to Calibre I’ve also fixed the covers to a book series that suddenly got updated to an awful ‘new hip’ version! :)
I’m now intrigued about repurposing the Kindle hardware as it still works and I don’t want it to go to waste, but with this and other recent events I’m done personally proving data or money to these big corporate companies as much as I possibly can.
The only surprise here is that it took them this long to do it.
I am sorry, what?
Turn on PC or phone. Download ebook from torrent site. Enjoy.
It’s not difficult to switch?
Oddly enough, pirated ebooks are a malware minefield. And hard to find.
That said, I have about 8000.
Try explaining how to do that to your non-techie relatives, especially the older ones who like reading. Yes, this makes is more difficult to switch.
Why don’t you use library genesis or Anna‘s archive?
It eludes me how people pay to ‘buy’ something that they cannot download in the first place. If I don’t have it as a file on my computer, I don’t own it. You wouldn’t pay to ‘buy’ a physical item if that meant only being able to look at it at the store, without the ability to take it home and do whatever you want with it.
Convenience. Most people reads book once, if they finish it at all.
Just wait until they can figure out how to do this to physical items. How? Idfk bro what am I a rocket appliance?
Subscription lock
I’d love to see them put that on the big black dildo I purchase each year. Try me!
Lol
sorry vibrating/heating function locked until daily dues are paid.
Safety eject option locked until subscription is paid. “911. I have a dildo shoved in my ass and my safety eject subscription ran out. Please help!” you know, it sounds crazy and like this could never happen but I say it’s just crazy enough it will happen. Look at who the American president is. That’s all the proof you need.
They are allowed to do that? It’s your ebooks, not their ebooks.
According to them you only have a license to those ebooks.
And Amazon owns them? I would be furious as a publisher.
No, the files are mostly owned by the publisher. That’s why you sometimes have stories where books disappear from Kindles because the rights holders revoke Amazon’s license to sell their books. It’s what happened with one version of Orwell’s 1984, ironically.
It’s ridiculous, if you ask me, but that’s the reality with Broken By Design DRM ebooks.
That’s why it’s prudent for any buyers of ebooks to download them as soon as you can, and put them in a library like “Calibre”, that way, even if Amazon loses their license to sell those publishers books, you still have access to the ebooks you bought with your money.
And that’s why it’s bad that Amazon is removing the option to download the files yourself. And why I recommend people to take their business and wallets elsewhere! Stop giving Bezos your money.And Amazaon doesn’t have to reimburse you then, since they revoked your permission to read them, which is what you paid for?
It’s not what happened when they removed 1984 off of people’s Kindles. I think somewhere in the fine print, they’ll probably have a clause that says they’re allowed to do that.
Uneducated 2 cents. afaik the publishers have some kind of “part ownership”, where they can pull it out from the store whenever. The “anti-piracy” feature you get with DRMs is why many publishers actually like them tho. The part ownership thing is just icing on the cake. So no, a good chunk of publishers won’t be furious at all. DRM gives what publishers want and more, at the expense of the consumers in a way that most wouldn’t realize.
And if anything, I think it makes more sense to think that these publishers are also just granting Amazon some kind of “license” to sell their e-books.
Amazon would absolutely be destroying their relationship with a publisher though, if they decide to block the selling or access of a book to large group of people who are would-be buyers. But, at the end of the day, publishers want to know how much they’re making from putting their e-books on Amazon, and as long as that revenue is enough to satisfy their needs, they don’t need to care too much about the odd customer who had their book revoked, and they would generally be pretty shielded from any sort of disputes as long as Amazon is making those revoking calls.
I’m really glad that I downloaded my entire Kindle library a month ago, and converted it all to either CBZ or Epub.
Fuck Bezos.
One tip for the audiobook-fans: Download your Audible books while you still can. It’s only a matter of time before Bezos locks those downloads too. Libation will help liberate your library into DRM-free files.
reMarkable, PineNote, Bookeen, etc…
I’m not saying anybody deserve to be mistreated … but come on, at this point if you buy something from Amazon it’s Stockholm syndrome. Just do NOT. It’s that easy.
F*ck Bezos and other billionaires. Stop making them even richer from your pain. Stop your mind from being literally enslaved!
Thing is, the pinenote is €610, and the kindle paperwhite is £160, cheaper on discount.
I get your point and there’s a reason why the kindle is as cheap as it is, but I can understand why someone would see those prices and go for the kindle.
there’s a reason why the kindle is as cheap as it is,
Indeed, cf https://lemmy.world/comment/15163037 unfortunately too cheap usually comes at a non financial cost.
Or go for the Kobo, which is similarly priced as the Kindle. The Kobo Clara Colour is £150
I’ve had three ereaders, all three were kobo.Yet I wouldn’t recommend them anymore. There’s a mandatory online activation now. There are ways to bypass it but it’s not great.
Many models are unstable with KoReader so it’s not even an alternative anymore.
The day I replace my eReader is going to be a hard day.
I love how hackable Kobos are. I put KOReader on mine and it’s honestly just the best experience I could ask for.
There is a whole community of people out there who will pretty much refuse to buy brand new electronics. And thats for very obvious and valid reasons.
Kindles can be found for dirt cheap if not free 2nd hand. And so many users have a kindle for this reason. Myself included. Id never throw out or discard an electronic device that continues to work. For the same obvious reasons as why i dont buy new ones.
And so this information is super relevant and important to users like me. Regardless of how much people like you might be convinced that “we had it coming” or whatever.
Sure, it’s the same problem with most of electronics, it’s the console business model, or ink printer, where the device itself is “too” cheap and companies make money on content. Unfortunately it comes with shackles. I’m all for breaking the shackles but unfortunately has to be aware of what they are getting into, not just the trouble but also potentially supporting the company promoting DRMs and more.
I work in XR and Meta/Facebook is the embodiment of that problem. The Quest is too cheap compared to alternatives like Lynx (standalone designing in France, unfortunately still running on Android but at least rootable) or even the “old” now Valve Index, which in addition to its price also requires a gaming desktop.
So… it’s a money making machine for corporations. Hopefully recycling is done in a way that provide 0 support for the corporations locking down its device, promoting its marketplace BUT also, sadly less realistic, doesn’t also prevent companies who try to sell genuine alternative that do NOT promote such business model from existing.
TL;DR: get a 2nd hand reMarkable, PineNote, Bookeen, etc…
3Easier said than done. Had a quick search. In 45km of my home there is not one reMarkable, PineNone or Bookeen. There is 2 kobos. And around 200 kindles. Kindes are starting at 5 bucks for ones that look a little beat up. Kobos are 80 bucks. You can still avoid buying most books from amazon. Obviously not all. Even owning Kobo there are some books you end up buying from Amazon. They have the largest foreign language library. There are thousands of popular books which you cannot get in a foreign language anywhere else these days. And you have to acknowledge that most people in the world are not reading books in English.
Sometimes you can get a solid deal. If youre super patient or lucky. But the 2nd hand market will generally always follow the market distribution of retail.
So long as kindle is domninating. 2nd hand users are gonna be heavily pressured into buying kindle.
I wholeheartedly agree that we shouldnt support amazon and i do think they are making kindles a pain.
But i dont think you can expect people to just find 2nd hand alternatives like what you listed. Especially when you consider the demographic of people shopping for eraders.
This is why i find these kinds of comment chains futile. We all love to vote with our money, but its not that simple for a lot of people. Maybe instead of this “you get what you deserve” attitude we could put more energy towards promoting the jailbreaks and trying to make those as accessible as possible for your chineese grandma to be able to do it herself on her Windows Vista. Not to mention that there is 0 value in telling anyone that bought a new kindle that they deserve whats comming. At best they sell their kindle when they buy a kobo perpetuating the cycle. At worst they trash it and contribute the already growing problems of ewaste.
FWIW my point isn’t about shaming people, it’s to make buyers fully aware of the consequence of their actions, both political and ecological. My point is to show that actual alternatives exist and yes they are more rare and expensive (probably also because they are rare, which is by design for Amazon, they do have scale in mind from the founding of the company, they undercut in order to dominate all marketplaces!). I genuinely wish the options I listed were both cheaper and more available. Now… it’s a bit like buying clothes from Primark vs e.g. Patagonia. The pricing is radically different, and their are both selling clothes, but I’d argue they are NOT the same products, including the ecological impact. So… again, not trying to shame anyone, solely show that alternatives, with different trade off, do actually exist TODAY. Every time one person try to go with the cheap and popular, they are tipping the scale to, IMHO, worst solutions for everyone else, including the 2nd hand market.
unfortunately though, due to the same issues there isn’t a very large second hand market of those either. Like the cheapest remarkable second hand I could find was still 300$ and the cheapest pine note was 270$ for preowns.
when you compare it to the kindle which has preowns starting at 40$ it’s a hard buy
I got a secondhand Kobo on eBay for less than $100, almost in new condition (the seller just forgot to include the charging cable, but luckily I had plenty of spare micro-USB cables). It’s a 2018 model, but it has 8 GB of storage, plenty for most people, and a nice 6" 300 PPI screen with warm light and dark mode. It’s more than sufficient.
Point being, alternatives are out there. reMarkable and Boox aren’t exactly equivalent devices, since those are meant as more e-ink note-taking tablets, not dedicated e-readers. You could probably find a 2018 Kobo Clara HD for around $40-50 used nowadays as well… and it has more features than the equivalent 2018 Kindle.
Yeah it seems I misunderstood what those tablets were,
I did find the old Samsung Tab tablets that would do pretty decent job though, those are somewhat around the same price range too, like 70-140ish range preowned
And looking into the kobo clara series it does look like those are about 120-130 second hand currently so not as bad
Been using an Onyx Boox Nova 3 for maybe 8 years now. It runs android, drm free everything (edit: it has no store really, it is basically empty. Supports virtually any filetype you can read. Epub, pdf, mobi, cbz). For some android could be a distraction from reading, but the browser is slow enough to were you use it to hop on annas-archive, get a book and then quickly close it. File transfer via shared wifi or USB, good reader, some nice reading stats without needing any account. Recommend if anyone wants to jump the amazon ship.
E-paper devices with Android are usually way underpowered for the platform, easier to just use the phone for such things.
I think you are missing the point of using an e-ink device… I don’t think anyone would use one because of “how powerful” it is.
I don’t want to read for hours on end on my phone or computer. With this, I can turn backlight off and use a lamp, like a normal book. Better for my eyes and relaxing.
Also, having dedicated devices for certain activities will change how you interact with them when using them. If I read a book on my computer I am tempted to look things up, get some work done or play a game. This is just for leisurely reading, and so when I pick it up that is what I do with it.
If you read a lot (books, not documentation which requires looking things up) then it really is a lot better for your eyes and a better experience to use e-ink.
