Amazon’s killing a feature that let you download and backup Kindle books
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Do yourself a favour, switch to Kobo or a third party ereader...
Especially if you're not in the US. -
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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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That's why I don't download or purchase ebooks from Amazon, but only get them from places I can download a non-DRM'd copy. I'm not looking to break any laws, but if I pay for it, I want to be able to have it whenever I want even when the Internet is down. Recently a buddy gave me his old blu-ray juke box, and now I'm doing the same thing with my favorite movies as well. And building a home lab. It's finally time I decreased (not completely ended) my reliance on the cloud, given the shit show my nation collectively voted for.
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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No I mean, now that I got caliber they block book downloads.
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) -
This doesn't track.
To pull my books into calibre, I need to first download them onto the Kindle, which requires wifi.
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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Do yourself a favour, switch to Kobo or a third party ereader...
Especially if you're not in the US.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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Do yourself a favour, switch to Kobo or a third party ereader...
Especially if you're not in the US.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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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.
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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Do yourself a favour, switch to Kobo or a third party ereader...
Especially if you're not in the US.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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Kobo allows epub
Kindle doesn't? Mines 2 years old but my co worker got one for Xmas and theirs loads the epub I sent them no problem at all
Honestly the Kobo is better as a physical device imo but the Kindle is perfectly simple to commit crimes on if you have Calibre
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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To be quite honest I never allowed my Kindle or my Kobo to go online and the experience is not that different. The build quality on the Kindle is a bit better superior and I might well go back. Calibre is the real hero of the story IMO.
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.
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Get an old Kindle. The news ones make it hard for you to connect to your computer. But even just a couple of years back you could plug in your Kindle to your computer through a USB and just drag and drop files. It only reads the proprietary .mobi format but Calibre, an excellent piece of software, will automatically convert .epub files to .mobi for you and it has a great algorithm.
Then all you gotta do is look up whatever you want on libgen and for the price of one kindle you can have a virtually infinite library of books.
I've actually had my first generation Kindle for about ~14 years now and my newer one for about ~3 years. I won't ever buy a new one, but the ones from ~3 years ago are excellent pieces of hardware.
You just have to disconnect it from the internet and never turn on the wifi. If you do, Amazon will fuck with your settings and make your life difficult.
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That barely tells me anything because I could never afford Apple tech
But from what I read, Apple devices genuinely need an external piece of software to even upload anything there rather than you just copypasting the files, so idk how fair of a comparison it is.Meta data manager, file organiser by metadata, upload a subset to your device, sync device metadata back to your library, built-in reader, file format conversion, file editing.
It's a whole suite really.
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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.
Just pirate them at this point instead of giving your money to predatory companies lol
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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.
Because supporting the US economy from outside of it right now is ludicrous and Amazon is a union busting mega corporation that destroy local economies...
Now, I'm not a Kobo corporate shill, I don't care which device you get, I did say there are other ereaders you can get, pick whatever you want. You don't care about thr trade wars, you can get a Nook or Remarkable. You care but don't like Kobo? You can buy an Onyx or another Chinese brand. You can use your phone, an old tablet whatever you want.
Personally, I've never not found a book on kobo but if it happened and it wasn't at my library, I'd find alternative to buying on amazon, I'd get it physical or find other ways to get it.
You want to continue using amazon products and contribute to the success of Bezos and his billionaire friends, that's your prerogative but a lot of us are not ready to do that for the sole sake of minor convenience.
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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.
Previously, you could just download the books on the Kindle for PC, use a random decoder software or install a plugin for Calibre, and boop, decoded books, readable in Calibre, can be converted to EPUB.
For ssssssome reasonnns I've been looking at how to do the same thing again, but apparently you need an old version of KfPC because the new one uses new encryption/file format that hasn't been sussed out yet. Weirdly enough, even with the newer app, I've still been able to download a bunch of books that didn't have DRM to begin with, but of course Amazon doesn't exactly advertise if a book is DRM-free anywhere on the store page.
Also weirdly enough this quest of mine actually started last year when one Finnish ebook store was closed down, but that was less of a problem. I just downloaded all of my purchases as unencrypted EPUBs. Guess the local publishers are less dickish, worst thing they asked for was watermarking.
