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.
i buy most ebooks from a small local bookstore. for the rest there’s still zlib
Are you buying ebooks in a physical store? How does that work?
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.
ebooks have managed to pull the same scam that game developers pulled on gamers 20 years ago.
“ebooks will be cheaper! and with the fact that we wont have to pay for printing, shipping, storage, etc, You’ll pay a lower price while the author/publisher still receive more money than they would have from the physical book! its a win/win for everyone!”
aaaand then as soon as they were accepted ebook prices became the same (or near enough) price as the physical version, and in a few rare cases, even more expensive. Resulting in the massive promised profits for publishers, and maybe authors, but no gain but lots of demerits (like obnoxious drm, and shit like amazon going onto your device to delete it cause they lost the rights or something, which has happened) for end users/readers
And thats first party, brand new books.
There is no second hand market for ebooks, like there is from physical. Si theres no browsing a place like Half Price Booked or whatever to find something that isnt in your normal wheel house but thanks to being pre-owed, its cheap enough to roll the dice on.
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.
Undernet and #bookz for me somehow turned out to be easier than more popular styles of piracy.
Is bookz a channel in undernet?
yes
Why don’t you use library genesis or Anna‘s archive?
Library Genesis is down. Maybe for good
C’mon United States, do the anti-trust thing! You used to be so good at it!
Did they? There have been a few cases, sure, but in general they’ve not been good in this regard.
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.
If buying is not owning…
I agree. However, some dishonest services allow to download, but downloaded file is DRM. It is even worse.
Most services are forced to carry DRM only versions of Ebooks by the book publishers. But there are ways of legally removing the DRM - it’s a faff but doable. I buy epubs and don’t use Kindle (haven’t for a long time) as it’s much harder to remove the DRM and actually own your books.
But way I look at it - if I bought the Kindle version of a book, I can just download a DRM free version by sailing the seas. Fuck Amazon.
It is very easy to remove DRM from kindle Books, but since you will not be avle to download them it will not be possible anymore.
i keep getting mixed msgs on this (then again, I could be misinterpreting) but it sounds like you can still download the ebook to your kindle (it will be in .kfx format), but if you plug the kindle into the computer and copy the .kfx file to it, that you should then be able to import it into calibre on your computer and the kfx plugin should strip the DRM.
i haven’t tested this to be sure yet (my kindle library is already downloaded and i’ve just been buying ebooks from Kobo since the Amazon announcement)
https://rl.bloat.cat/r/Calibre/comments/1h6wrlq/assistance_with_kfx_drm_removal_in_calibre/
DRM removal from Kindles from 2024 doesn’t seem to work, that is why they are removing it.
That’s where I’m getting conflicting info: I understand you won’t be able to “download and transfer via USB” from the Amazon website but when you download a book from the Kindle over wifi it’s still a file on your kindle that can be browsed to if you connect your Kindle to a computer via USB
Then you copy that downloaded ebook (.kfx) to your computer and import into Calibre and use the Kindle plugin that strips DRM from .kfx files.
I’m going to try that today and see if it actually works…
It is pretty obvious why they are doing this though, but it also means you don’t own them, you are renting them.
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.
