Amazon’s killing a feature that let you download and backup Kindle books
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Yeah I looked into the Kobo store and a LOT of the books I have - which are not exactly small titles - aren't available there.
In some cases they've got the first couple books or audiobooks out of a series that currently has 10
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I get my books for my used Kindle off Libby because I have no expectation of ownership and I don't want to give Amazon the satisfaction of my money.
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Where do you usually go to find the DRM free books? Sometimes for new books I am unable to purchase a copy without any sort of DRM
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Authors sometimes offer direct buy ebooks from their personal site so you can support the author directly.
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I think it's worth noting that the bigger issue here might not be the drm, but the access Amazon has into your device. Regardless if you can download 'another' version of the book or not (that is something you can find out for yourself relatively quickly) there is no reason it should be considered ok for the company to insist that it can connect to a device you own and modify the contents of it. Even with ownership of the books being a topic, certainly there should be little questions of whether you own the device, and along with that being able to control access to it.
Surely there is something in the user agreement that states accessing the download functionality also grants Amazon permission to go in and claw back things they've uploaded to the device, but i think that should be at least half the argument. Restrict whatever they want up front, I've downloaded it to my device and they consider that a fair exchange for my money, but to then say they screwed up on their end so they're taking it back (assumedly without giving up the money they made as part of the agreement) is where things should be breaking.
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Do yourself a favour, switch to Kobo or a third party ereader...
Especially if you're not in the US. -
Crap, I'm still pissed at them over Dash buttons. They could have just stopped supporting them but NOOOO, they changed the setup site so it bricked them. I still have half a dozen uninitialized ones I can never use now. Fuck you, Bezos, and the giant stick up your ass you rode in on.
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My wife borrows a lot of ebooks from our library, which are delivered to a kindle through Amazon. I’ve used this USB download option to remove the DRM from some of those borrowed books. Guess I’ll have to figure out a new approach now…
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Ah, gotcha. Yeah, I've been in that position a few times, actually; though usually it's after I put it on a todo list. I was planning to switch to Linux, then Microsoft made Windows intolerable to use. I was wanting to buy a new laptop, then Tr*mp started a trade war. I had "back up my Amazon ebooks" on a todo for several months, and then this news comes out.
It's like all of these companies and groups have decided to push me into doing stuff I wanted to do anyway.
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Definitely switch to alternatives from Amazon. They treat their authors abhorrently too.
I've personally been super happy with libro.fm for Audiobooks (essentially Audible, but you can download the audiobooks DRM-free) -
My kindle has been on airplane mode for years and I read new books all the time with it, but hey, whatever works for you
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A whole new generation of the Kobo readers just came out too!
I've got one of the previous Gen and I was so happy to find they have models with the clicky buttons to turn the page.
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Yup, I've had my Kobo for quite a while now and I still love it. The push buttons are great, as pointed out by another poster, but also.. I've just never had any issues with it. None whatsoever. I'm hoping this one will just never brick.
About a month after I got mine, I bought the exact same one for my husband and he says his is still working like a charm as well! Now to be fair, I had never owned any other e-readers so I can't really compare it to anything, but quality-wise I'd say they're really good.
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Yeah I got the libra colour and it's really great for the buttons. Didn't really care about the colour part but the regular one was out of stock when I got it so I just went with it and I'm finding I enjoy it a lot. Especially when I read picture books for mt kid's bedtime
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I have no need for my Kindle services anymore. I bought books there for how easy it was to put on my electronic devices, and to easily make back up copies for later. If I can't downloaf and reformat the e-book to easily make a physical copy I don't want it.
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Why "especially if you're not i the US"?
I'm not in the US, and switched to kobo a couple of years ago, but i've had to keep buying books from amazon, sine the kobo store is just realy bad (missing a lot of books, even popular once), and there are few others who offer ebooks here.
The quality of the devices seem not the greatest either.
Bought a kobo libra first and it lasted just long enough for the warranty to expire before it just fully died.
Replaced it with a kobo libra colour, and had to replace it three times before I got one that didn't have pin holes on the screen where light shone through.Meanwhile my 9 year old kindle oasis works just fine, it has just gotten slow and the battery is worse, which is why I replaced it with kobo.
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I've always heard that they didn't. Just checked about it and they started to support it in 2022. But it's still not native, it gets converted to their proprietary format.
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I'm actually suprised Google never went and made an reader they already have the store and software. Kobo does the job for me anyway though.
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Look to whom you are giving the money. That is a very important part of the whole story.
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Good news is that there are alternative ways to download these books from Amazon for backup purposes. It’s not as straightforward but it’s doable.
That said I will be refusing to buy from any storefront that doesn’t offer a way to download my books. Even adobe digital editions is a viable alternative.
