Amazon’s killing a feature that let you download and backup Kindle books

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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.

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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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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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Just pirate them at this point instead of giving your money to predatory companies lol

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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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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.