this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2025
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Kindle Is Making It Harder to Switch to Rival eReader Brands. (www.howtogeek.com)
submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
188 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 days ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

The only surprise here is that it took them this long to do it.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 days ago (5 children)

I am sorry, what?

Turn on PC or phone. Download ebook from torrent site. Enjoy.

It's not difficult to switch?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago (1 children)

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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[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (4 children)

Undernet and #bookz for me somehow turned out to be easier than more popular styles of piracy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

#bookz is fantastic!

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Why don’t you use library genesis or Anna‘s archive?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

Library Genesis is down. Maybe for good

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

C'mon United States, do the anti-trust thing! You used to be so good at it!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

Did they? There have been a few cases, sure, but in general they've not been good in this regard.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 4 days ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Convenience. Most people reads book once, if they finish it at all.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Just wait until they can figure out how to do this to physical items. How? Idfk bro what am I a rocket appliance?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Subscription lock

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 days ago

If buying is not owning…

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I agree. However, some dishonest services allow to download, but downloaded file is DRM. It is even worse.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Most services are forced to carry DRM only versions of Ebooks by the book publishers. But there are ways of legally removing the DRM - it's a faff but doable. I buy epubs and don't use Kindle (haven't for a long time) as it's much harder to remove the DRM and actually own your books.

But way I look at it - if I bought the Kindle version of a book, I can just download a DRM free version by sailing the seas. Fuck Amazon.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

It is very easy to remove DRM from kindle Books, but since you will not be avle to download them it will not be possible anymore.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

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)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (2 children)

That's where I'm getting conflicting info: I understand you won't be able to "download and transfer via USB" from the Amazon website but when you download a book from the Kindle over wifi it's still a file on your kindle that can be browsed to if you connect your Kindle to a computer via USB

Then you copy that downloaded ebook (.kfx) to your computer and import into Calibre and use the Kindle plugin that strips DRM from .kfx files.

I'm going to try that today and see if it actually works...

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

They are allowed to do that? It's your ebooks, not their ebooks.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

According to them you only have a license to those ebooks.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

And Amazons owns them? I would be furious as a publisher.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago (2 children)

No, the files are mostly owned by the publisher. That's why you sometimes have stories where books disappear from Kindles because the rights holders revoke Amazon's license to sell their books. It's what happened with one version of Orwell's 1984, ironically.

It's ridiculous, if you ask me, but that's the reality with Broken By Design DRM ebooks.

That's why it's prudent for any buyers of ebooks to download them as soon as you can, and put them in a library like "Calibre", that way, even if Amazon loses their license to sell those publishers books, you still have access to the ebooks you bought with your money.
And that's why it's bad that Amazon is removing the option to download the files yourself. And why I recommend people to take their business and wallets elsewhere! Stop giving Bezos your money.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Uneducated 2 cents. afaik the publishers have some kind of “part ownership”, where they can pull it out from the store whenever. The “anti-piracy” feature you get with DRMs is why many publishers actually like them tho. The part ownership thing is just icing on the cake. So no, a good chunk of publishers won’t be furious at all. DRM gives what publishers want and more, at the expense of the consumers in a way that most wouldn’t realize.

And if anything, I think it makes more sense to think that these publishers are also just granting Amazon some kind of “license” to sell their e-books.

Amazon would absolutely be destroying their relationship with a publisher though, if they decide to block the selling or access of a book to large group of people who are would-be buyers. But, at the end of the day, publishers want to know how much they’re making from putting their e-books on Amazon, and as long as that revenue is enough to satisfy their needs, they don’t need to care too much about the odd customer who had their book revoked, and they would generally be pretty shielded from any sort of disputes as long as Amazon is making those revoking calls.

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