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.
To all the people who are saying "I'll just pirate books," you are aware you can buy eBooks from places that 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.
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It is pretty obvious why they are doing this though, but it also means you don't own them, you are renting them.
no doubt
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To all the people who are saying "I'll just pirate books," you are aware you can buy eBooks from places that 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.
Does that provide epub when baught? Or does it lock you in with their DRM app?
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I got a secondhand Kobo on eBay for less than $100, almost in new condition (the seller just forgot to include the charging cable, but luckily I had plenty of spare micro-USB cables). It's a 2018 model, but it has 8 GB of storage, plenty for most people, and a nice 6" 300 PPI screen with warm light and dark mode. It's more than sufficient.
Point being, alternatives are out there.
There's also the old Samsung Tab tablets I found that would do pretty decent job as well, those are around the same price range too, like the A10 and the A8's
And looking into the kobo clara series it does look like those are about 120-130 second hand currently so not as bad
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Where the hell are you buying books that they cost 50 lol
im not from the us. they can cost 50-150 bucks or more here, no idea how much it costs for you.
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TL;DR: get a 2nd hand reMarkable, PineNote, Bookeen, etc…
Easier said than done. Had a quick search. In 45km of my home there is not one reMarkable, PineNone or Bookeen. There is 2 kobos. And around 200 kindles. Kindes are starting at 5 bucks for ones that look a little beat up. Kobos are 80 bucks. You can still avoid buying most books from amazon. Obviously not all. Even owning Kobo there are some books you end up buying from Amazon. They have the largest foreign language library. There are thousands of popular books which you cannot get in a foreign language anywhere else these days. And you have to acknowledge that most people in the world are not reading books in English.
Sometimes you can get a solid deal. If youre super patient or lucky. But the 2nd hand market will generally always follow the market distribution of retail.
So long as kindle is domninating. 2nd hand users are gonna be heavily pressured into buying kindle.
I wholeheartedly agree that we shouldnt support amazon and i do think they are making kindles a pain.
But i dont think you can expect people to just find 2nd hand alternatives like what you listed. Especially when you consider the demographic of people shopping for eraders.
This is why i find these kinds of comment chains. We all love to vote with our money, but its not that simple for a lot of people. Maybe instead of this "you get what you deserve" attitude we could put more energy towards promoting the jailbreaks and trying to make those as accessible as possible for your chineese grandma to be able to do it herself on her Windows Vista.
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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 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
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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?
Ahh, the regular store has it listed in stock, not the EU. Don't know if they stock it anywhere else unless someone is reselling.
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Does that provide epub when baught? Or does it lock you in with their DRM app?
I thought you could load bookshop.org eBookd 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...
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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.
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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?
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To all the people who are saying "I'll just pirate books," you are aware you can buy eBooks from places that 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.
I hear you saying that, but the books I want to buy are never on those sites.
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To all the people who are saying "I'll just pirate books," you are aware you can buy eBooks from places that 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.
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.
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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.
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.
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That was amusingly well timed:
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.
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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
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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'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.
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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
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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..
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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.
