This is not an anti-Kindle rant. I have purchased (rented?) several Kindle titles myself.
However, YSK that you are only licensing access to the book from Amazon, you don’t own it like a physical book.
There have been cases where Amazon deletes a title from all devices. (Ironically, one version of “1984” was one such title).
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html
There have also been cases where a customer violated Amazon’s terms of service and lost access to all of their Kindle e-books. Amazon has all the power in this relationship. They can and do change the rules on us lowly peasants from time to time.
Here are the terms of use:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201014950
Note, there are indeed ways to download your books and import them into something like Calibre (and remove the DRM from the books). If you do some web searches (and/or search YouTube) you can probably figure it out.
Finally got around to backing up my over 200 audiobooks in a DRM-free format after this post reminded me it was on my to-do list. Libation is pretty damn good.
Also to add that amazon has been caught encouraging users to “refund” e-books and purchase a different one, without telling users that these refunds are clawed back from the Authors.
Then to double fuck the Authors they didnt give authors detailed statements - only payments of the monthly total, so any “refunds” were deducted from the total sales from that month and author paid the difference. This was only noticed when an author with an accounting/finance background noticed a negative payment statement one month and looked into this and found amazon routinely charging back authors, sometimes for multiple copies of ‘refunds’ that didnt actually get refunded, straight up stealing from the Authors.
I do, I get them directly from IRC
How lol, Books are the only thing where I find it hard to … well, get a legal copy from cough
IRCHighway channel #ebooks, don’t use a web client, I won’t give you links but this should be enough to send you on your way
I looked in to the whole DRM removal thing. From what I could tell, everything was majorly out of date, required a really old version of Calibre, and didn’t work with newer books.
The DeDrm plugin and the most recent Calibre worked for me just yesterday on a brand new book. Something that’s easy to miss is that you need to put in the serial number of your kindle device and make sure you download the e-book for that same device. Otherwise the plugin won’t be able to decrypt it.
Yep, looked it up again today and some proper information has been posted publicly in the interim since I last tried. I was able to strip the drm from a handful of my books today using it and an older version of the Kindle PC app.
Glad you sorted it!
Calibre can be recent - the plug-in was abandoned but forked, but an old physical Kindle is beneficiary. However some books in the store are no longer available for those lately.
This is why I only read books from the library
Jokes on you I pirates mine!
“I’m aware, Amazon just hosts things I got from libgen and the #bookz underneath irc channel.”
Duh. Same goes for Steam games and most of digital content.
If you want to keep it, there’s usually always an option to sail the high seas.
Except Steam never deletes games that you already own or takes them away from you for other reasons.
Yes, they could do that in the future but its the one company where that is unlikely.
Yeah, while Gaben is still at the helm…
Not an American, but I did buy digital books on Amazon and Kindle.
Have you seen the new ruling about games from California? Doest that apply to ebooks (since its digital goods?) Or not?
Kobo and epub only. Anything else, you don’t own and you shouldn’t pay for it.
Also iTunes
Technically, we’re one update away from Kobo taking our device away too. I do love my KOReader on my Clara 2E though
Doesn’t matter. All my books are epub. If kobo starts eating dick, I go somewhere else.
Amazon is on my shit list and will not buy any products from them ever again. They are one of the worst monopolist mega corporations. They treat their employees like slaves, are anti-repair, anti-consumer.
I gifted an older Kindle to my sister, and the screen broke (out of warranty). I contacted Amazon about it, and they basically said they don’t make replacement parts and don’t service the kindles, they can only give me a small discount for buying a new one.
I looked up a guide on doing it myself, and even if I find a replacement screen, it’s really difficult. The screen is glued with a strong adhesive. The entire device looks very cheaply built and deliberately made really difficult to repair.
I mean to be fair they are very cheap to purchase all things considered. That said I’ve still got my Kindle 3 I bought used on eBay and it’s still going strong after like 10 years I’ve owned it.
Any Kindle owner should go find out how easy it is to get library books on their Kindle. It’s totally the way to go. You don’t have to buy their shit and deal with their rules.
Every single fucking time I try to get an ebook from my library there is a wait list weeks or even months long.
That’s a shame. They need more licenses per book, it sounds like. But at least your community is highly engaged with your library!
Borrow the hardback
The digital titles often come with a price tag that’s far higher than what consumers pay. While one hardcover copy of Cook’s latest novel costs the library $18, it costs $55 to lease a digital copy – a price that can’t be haggled with publishers.
And for that, the e-book expires after a limited time, usually after one or two years, or after 26 check outs, whichever comes first. While e-books purchased by consumers can last into perpetuity, libraries need to renew their leased e-material.
This might actually make sense. Borrowers can’t lose or destroy a digital copy, or bring it back late. Probably a digital copy enables more checkouts. Max of 26? Well think about he condition if the last library book you checked out that had 26 stamps on the list. Hard copies don’t last forever. Sad that they had to charge more based on these assumptions, but you can imagine some reasoning to them.
I think we need to know the average number of lendings for hardback vs ebook over a 2 year period. In theory, the library should be indifferent to the format being lent out and the costs should reflect that.
Sadly it’s probably also the case that publishers’ ebook pricing to libraries is based on paranoia about them destroying all book sales, plus the usual corporate greed.
Like hell I don’t. Calibre plus NoDRM says otherwise.
Buy, rip, refund, repeat.
Buy, rip,
refund, repeat.i support this against amazon, also kindly put it on libgen or anna’s for humanity’s benefit
Nah, no need to be a shitheel. I’m cool with paying for books, authors gotta eat. I wouldn’t refund a book I’ve read.
Totally agree with paying for recently written books. But are you cool with paying authors who have been dead for 69 years?
It depends. I’m not saying I never pirate books. I’m not going to just support a publisher milking a book that should belong to the commons.
Also, some publishers have taken to raising ebook prices to as high or higher than hardback costs. For those I might buy one book by an author and pirate another. I won’t justify it other than to say I only ever bought paperbacks anyway and still remember those being like $3.99 to $6.99, so I’m not paying $18+ for an ebook novel because of publisher greed.
But if it’s an author I like, I buy their books, and support them in other ways (like with Sanderson’s Kickstarter for example).
That’s why you shouldn’t buy books from Amazon or other online ebook stores instead just download the ePubs elsewhere.
I’d also highly recommend KOreader if you have a Kindle or Ereader which supports it, as it supports many more formats and has a nice interface.
Thank you for introducing me to KOReader and Kindle jailbreaking.
Fortunately, the Kindle Paperwhite I use is no longer supported, and is compatible with few of the jailbreaks out there.
A good rabbit hole to dive into over the weekend.
The interface is 100% of the reason I won’t use it. It’s by far the worst experience for navigating a library I’ve ever seen. It’s just access to your filesystem, except with effectively no files on the screen at a time.
There’s no tags, no ability to choose between by author, series, publisher, genre, etc, just a really bad presentation of your filesystem.
You don’t own your Kindle books because you bought them from Amazon
I don’t own mine because I pirated them
We are not the same
edit: I actually try to circle back around and buy physical copies of any book I really enjoy. But I’m much better about paying for video games, tabletop games, and even journalism than I am fiction… I think my bezos resentment gets in the way a bit there.
Better to give to their patreon if possible. Awesome authors like Shirlatoon have them. Because, quite frankly, fuck the publishers too.
I’m subscribed! It’s one of my favorite series. Also, The Mark of the Fool is another good series.
If you like HWFWM check out the Mayor of Noobtown.
Hwfwm?
I’ll just keep using my local public library.
Most of them lend eBooks these days so I know I won’t get to keep them regardless, but I also don’t have to pay for them.
And the author is getting paid.