Kindle Is Making It Harder to Switch to Rival eReader Brands.

Wait, people who have Kindles buy their books from Amazon?

I always just got mine from a certain private mouse tracker.

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..

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

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.

EDIT: Turns out I was wrong about bookshop.org, you actually can't load their eBooks into a Kindle. You need their app since they have their own DRM. Looks like I got all worked up about something without looking it up first.

See: https://bookshop.org/info/ebooks

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...

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!

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.
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.
- Or go for the Kobo, which is similarly priced as the Kindle. The Kobo Clara Colour is £150
- 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.
And PocketBook. Don't see them locking down anytime soon.

I am sorry, what?

Turn on PC or phone. Download ebook from torrent site. Enjoy.

It's not difficult to switch?

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.
- At least my non-techy relatives don't even know that what they're doing is called "pirating", lol. For them, it is just "getting media".
  
  I only learned that some people paid for digital media when I became fluent in English and got exposed to American social media.
Oddly enough, pirated ebooks are a malware minefield. And hard to find.

That said, I have about 8000.
- Where are you going to that they are a malware issue?
Why don’t you use library genesis or Anna‘s archive?
- Library Genesis is down. Maybe for good
Undernet and #bookz for me somehow turned out to be easier than more popular styles of piracy.
- Is bookz a channel in undernet?
- #bookz is fantastic!

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.

If buying is not owning…
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 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.
Convenience. Most people reads book once, if they finish it at all.

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.
- pretty sure that is us only

thus I have my personal library backed up on calibre. Wonderful software that's been around for twenty fiveish years.

I love Calibre. I've recently broken my E-Reader (Tolino) but all my books are backed up on Calibre so the only loss is the hardware (still sad but not as annoying)
There's also calibre-web for a self-hosted option with a web interface.
- IIRC it’s not as feature complete as the fat client
Yeah is this going to break calibre functionality? I remember using it to rip books from my kindle library but not how, exactly 🤔
- It’ll break saving books you bought from Amazon, but you’ll still be able to send books you got from other places to it from Calibre. Fortunately barely any of my ebooks on my kindle are from Amazon (though my next ereader isn’t going to be a kindle, that’s for sure).
- Probably some kind of plugin or script to run... i forget the specifics because literally grab the kindle version, then search z-library.

In the meantime, hackers have just released a new jailbreak and made it a more open platform than ever :^)

Please pass it forward: all Kindles can now be jailbroken

What can I do with a jailbroken kindle that makes it worth doing instead of just using calibre?
- Better Calibre integration.
  
  Custom shelves and book collections on Kindle.
- I switched from the default reader to koreader, and now I have dark mode (mine is probably about 8 years old and did not originally have this feature). Koreader has so many features and qol improvements compared to the default Kindle experience.
- Better reader, PDFs with reflow.

I'll continue pirating, thanks.

PSA: “Archiving” is a general legal-neutral and safe term you can use with co-workers.

Wether i am also a pirate one may speculate but i am always an archivist.
- Turns out it really is archiving when government decides to go renegade and start deleting everything they disagree with or wipe from history. Archive away beautiful data horders.
- Fuck that.
  
  YARR!!
This is the way.

library genesis exists, people. anna's archive, anyone?

digital drm is the one fucking thing they push onto us that we don't actually have to fucking deal with. thanks to our team of ~~rippers and crackers~~ people who hate this system.

leave amazon. leave netflix. leave whatever fucking streaming service you subscribe to, and stop being sensitive about rich people's money.

I have never more strongly considered a subscription to annas archive than when that new dropped.
A lot of books money goes to not rich people though
- if you can afford it, wire the author the 50 bucks or so for the book, and explain why you did it. most of them will be thrilled to get the full 50 for the book, i bet.
  
  if you can't, well they wouldnt have gotten any money anyway.

If it's alright for Facebook, it's alright for me. Yoho

🏴‍☠️

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.

Well, you should not use Amazon anything. Valuable lesson learned.

I have a first generation kindle that I bought 16 years ago. They used to be awesome, and Amazon shaped the way ecommerce worked. The lesson here is not to be fully dependent on one supplier, not to boycott everything just because it's big.
- Yeah, they were great back then. I have the first generation Kindle Paperwhite (12-ish years), though at this point I only use it to read fanfics lol
  
  AO3 let's you download entire fics directly in the EPUB & AZW3 format, doubt they're ever gonna change that 😁

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.

Joke's on them, I get all my books from Z-Library anyhow.

I have a few books I bought, but even then, I grab from z-library. More portable and no DRM.

My solution was to just redownload all my books from z-lib after I bought them already.

I've been monkey paw'd with my wish "Z library becoming the most convenient eBook platform"

Am I an idiot for enjoying my Kindle Paperwhite as an eReader, while at the same time never actually buying books from Amazon?

Same. I find ebooks for my family or we use Libby. I wouldn't know how to buy a book on my kindle if I wanted to.
Nope. Mine has never connected to the www
Same. Most news sites treating this change as a "Kindle issue" is borderline disinformation. This is an "Amazon issue". Kindle the device isn't changing and there is no reason to switch if you already own one (just please don't buy a new one).
It’s a good piece of hardware. I do the same thing. Although I recently got a Kobo and I gotta say that I do prefer the kobo slightly better. Kindle is still good shit though

Locked-in platform closing the door. How surprising.

Accepting DRM in the first place is the problem. Hard to avoid, but still. I just got a boox; great value, can't use adobe DRM. Didn't have any problem there. Of course, money is going everywhere except big "publishers", but that's hardly an issue; they choose their business model, I choose my customer model.

they choose their business model, I choose my customer model.

Ooh, this is very pithy. I like it. I will use it.

My Kobo e-reader is pretty nice and takes any ol e-pub file just fine. And Calibre, a third party software for managing ebooks, has a plugin to crack Kindle files. Just sayin

And Calibre, a third party software for managing ebooks, has a plugin to crack Kindle files

Which requires being able to download those files from Amazon. Which is what this post is all about, Amazon not allowing you to download the files anymore.
- I was thinking along the lines of if you already had them downloaded and wanted to switch off to something else
And Calibre, a third party software for managing ebooks, has a plugin to crack Kindle files.

Unfortunately currently broken for the latest version of Kindle for PC, which switched to a different encryption scheme. It also uses KFX file format that nobody likes, which fortunately can be converted to EPUB with another plugin, but de-DRMing doesn't seem to work right now. It still seems to work for titles in AZW3/MOBI that didn't get DRM update or didn't have DRM in the first place.

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

Repeat after me!.... En-shit-ti-fication!

I heard there are ways to jailbreak all Kindles...

How would that help here? The only thing Amazon is removing is the ability to download your purchased eBooks to your PC.
- It helps because you regain that feature when you jailbreak...

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?

That's fucked.

So anyway self hosting Kavita to read everything in my browser is hella convenient.

Interesting, I'd never heard of Kavita, so have just been using Calibre all these years. Did you start out on Kavita, or did you move from Calibre, or another software?
- I use calibre for my kindle, but kavita for web reading on any of my devices.
  
  The calibre web server kept claiming its downloads to my device were corrupted and would just never open books. Kavita just sends the books page as a web page which gets rid of that particular issue
- I tend to bounce around software. I ran into it at random researching docker containers and just kind of stuck with it. I've got a habit of trying to containerize everything nowadays haha
Dropping a link for the lazy/myself for later

https://www.kavitareader.com/

I love my Kobo. I installed KO Reader on it and have Calibre for managing my ebooks.

Get all my ebooks from z-library or Anna's archive.

..and for those on Linux there is 'DeGouru', a tool for de-DRMing internet archive books that are lending-restricted.

A bit annoying in that it is somewhat sensitive to the Python version one has installed but there are ways to manage that which I am not qualified to advise on.
That's my situation too. Got the Kobo Clara Color as a Christmas present for myself (the color was like $10 more, so what the hell) after resisting eBooks for years, and I really love it.

They take almost any ebook type, but they do have their own proprietary format, KEPUB. That's what their own store uses. Thankfully, Calibre can convert to and from it. Due to Kobo being able to more easily handle zooming in to images and things like that with KEPUB, it's sometimes worth converting.
- Nice. Mines an older Clara I bought about 5 years ago. I personally don't have the use for a color screen, but for $10 I guess why not! Most books I read don't have any images besides the cover
  
  I installed KO Reader as soon as I got it and never looked back. Not as pretty as the standard Nickel (?) OS but more customisable.
  
  I love having an e-reader. I read so much more because of it. Much more convenient, not having to worry about heavy books, holding open pages, no need to worry about proper lighting for reading. Light and small enough to bring everywhere. I will buy another immediately once this one dies.

This is why I never once purchased a book from Amazon even though I have a Kindle.

Pretty pumped to jailbreak it with the new jailbreak.

New kindle jailbreak you say?
- https://kindlemodding.org/jailbreaking/WinterBreak/
  
  Supposedly works on all Kindles, I haven't actually done a deep dive yet, just have it bookmarked since yesterday.
I'll be done with audible the moment I stop being able to liberate and archive what I pay for.

Until then, they're helping me build my audiobookshelf

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.

Piracy is the answer to the corpo over reach.

Deny the parasite profit... You are funding your enemy

It's not an accident that I download epubs and read them on Moon+.

Amazon signaled clearly years ago that their goal wasn't to make a convenient ebook reader, but to create an entire proprietary e-reading system designed solely to extract as much money as possible for as little value as possible. And this is just another step in that ongoing process.

It's not just Amazon. Libraries (and Libby, the app they use) are also making it difficult to do anything but read in a browser or use Kindle.

Overdrive (which is Libby) integrates directly into the Kobo OS so you can borrow books directly on the device instead of the roundabout way you have to do it on the Kindle.
- Its also available as an app on all android based e-readers.
- Overdrive's being phased out and being replaced by Libby according to the 2 libraries I frequent. I wonder if it will still be supported on Kobo OS once the website and apps are shut down?
- My wife uses Libby and books go directly to her kindle.
Libraries (and Libby, the app they use) are also making it difficult to do anything but read in a browser or use Kindle.

Sadly too true. To be fair though I don't think ANY librarian want that.

Here in Belgium we have an online library ( lirtuel.be ) that isn't actually too bad. I looked it up and they say they provided ePub/PDF so I registered right away. Then... I discovered what they meant wasn't ePub/PDF but rather DRMed ePub/PDF (here is an example https://www.lirtuel.be/resources/67aaf2124e480409978b68fb with ePub logo on the top right). Anyway I contacted them explaining that my ebook reader (reMarkable) does not support DRM and thus I couldn't read the content. They pointed me to their documentation https://confluence.demarque.com/confluence/cantook-station/fr/faq/verrou-numerique-et-identifiant-adobe/qu-est-ce-qu-un-verrou-numerique-drm which implies it's all "normal" to use that. I insisted, they didn't reply.

Long story short, I'm either not using their service anymore or using DeGourou https://github.com/Bingwithyou/DeGourou to make the content legally loaned actually usable. Sad state of affairs but I'm convinced none of the actual librarians, namely people who care for making knowledge discoverable and accessible like that. I'm sure they've been coerced by same big publishers.
- The librarians I've talked to simply don't know how any of this works. I've been told 3 times (the 3rd one today) that epub version of books are not available. Today it was a "trained computer aid that offers technology assistance" saying the epub format I download just last week is not available from the library.

The only surprise here is that it took them this long to do it.

Already been doing this, but I think this will finally light the fire under my ass to move to a boox device for all my reading I've got the big boox, which I use for sheet music, and quite like it, so the smaller ones are no brainers

FYI, Onyx egregiously violates GPL and basically gives the finger to anyone who complains. Not that anyone is necessarily clean as a whistle and even so they’re miles better than Jeff “I dressed like a fascist before it was cool” Bezos.

I’m a big fan of Kobo, but they also used to have a connection with Walmart.

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 Amazons owns them? I would be furious as a publisher.

Been using an Onyx Boox Nova 3 for maybe 8 4 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.

The Nova 3 released in late 2020, it hasn’t existed for 8 years.
- Ah shit I think you are right. Feels like I have had it forever but seems that was a false memory of some sort.
  
  I bought it while I lived in my previous apartment which I feel was longer ago and so I got a bit confused with the dates I think lol. Thanks for pointing it out.
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.

If this doesn't help physical book sales, nothing will.

Quick shout out to oceanofpdf

This is why I have an Android e-ink device. I can put the kindle app on it for anything from their shitty walled garden, but I also can put pretty much anything else I want on it too.

I'm so in love with Anna.....

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.