Kindle Is Making It Harder to Switch to Rival eReader Brands.
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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 am sorry, what?
Turn on PC or phone. Download ebook from torrent site. Enjoy.
It's not difficult to switch?
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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.
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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.
Just wait until they can figure out how to do this to physical items. How? Idfk bro what am I a rocket appliance?
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Better reader, PDFs with reflow.
How would the reading experience improve for regular ebooks?
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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
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What can I do with a jailbroken kindle that makes it worth doing instead of just using calibre?
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.
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TL;DR: get a 2nd hand reMarkable, PineNote, Bookeen, etc…
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
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I am sorry, what?
Turn on PC or phone. Download ebook from torrent site. Enjoy.
It's not difficult to switch?
Why don’t you use library genesis or Anna‘s archive?
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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.
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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.
The only surprise here is that it took them this long to do it.
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Why don’t you use library genesis or Anna‘s archive?
Library Genesis is down. Maybe for good
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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 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.
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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've bought myself a Boox Go Color 7. I love that one, even though it's twice as expensive as a Kobo or Kindle.
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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.
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According to their site and a couple others, they have recently started selling again and with what looks to be some variant of Debian on it.
I just went to pine64.org and I still see the PineNote community version being out of stock on the EU store. Is it available elsewhere?
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I am sorry, what?
Turn on PC or phone. Download ebook from torrent site. Enjoy.
It's not difficult to switch?
Undernet and #bookz for me somehow turned out to be easier than more popular styles of piracy.
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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.
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It is very easy to remove DRM from kindle Books.
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)
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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)
Starting February 26, 2025, the option «Download and transfer via USB» will no longer be available. You can still send Kindle books to Wi-Fi enabled devices by selecting the «Deliver or remove from device» option.»
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Undernet and #bookz for me somehow turned out to be easier than more popular styles of piracy.
#bookz is fantastic!
