There have been several threads about this on HN over the past few days and months. Just to avoid the confusion that seems to follow these, a few notes:
(1) This is the "Download and Transfer" option where Amazon allowed users to select books they had purchased a license to and download them from the Amazon website.
(2) The ability to transfer books from your computer to your Kindle using a USB cable is not affected.
(3) The ability to send non-Amazon-licensed ePubs using the Send to Kindle email feature is not affected.
> (2) The ability to transfer books from your computer to your Kindle using a USB cable is not affected.
Well, it kinda is. If you can no longer download the books you paid for, you can't upload them over USB. That's what that feature on their website was meant for, in fact.
Of course you can still upload non-Amazon content yes. Which is probably what I'll end up doing. I won't buy books on Amazon anymore if I can't remove the DRM.
This is far worse for me than the other possible interpretation - that you could download books but not transfer them. I buy Amazon e-books to read them on other e-readers, but now it looks like I can't.
I’m not sure why anyone buys Kindles when there are so many better options available.
I bought a Kobo Clara years ago, and it supports regular MOBI and ePub files.
My book purchases are no longer liked with the reader and I’ve never had a problem in all these years. And this wasn’t even the best or best value for money device I could have bought.
Today there are so many other better alternatives in all price points and form factors.
In three "taps" I buy a book and 10s later I start reading it.
Legally.
The device just works.
The alternatives?
Libraries here (France) have a very limited offer of ebooks.
Even for ebooks in English.
I owned a Kobo circa 2013 and it was awful.
I tried friend's devices more recently, and it's not the UX I expect from a "book".
A simple comparison; "Parable of the Sower", bought it for 3.49€ on amazon.fr, it's at 5.26€ on ebooks.com and it still got DRMs.
Even pirating is less convenient: some files are buggy, some files are weird OCR of physical books, you have to deal with the download and transfer...
And I just can't read physical books. I hate that.
So usually, if I really enjoy an ebook, I buy a physical copy in a local bookstore and give it to a friend/whoever I think is going to like it.
I would love an open ecosystem where I could rent ebooks from a library, and buy books that can be read wherever I want.
But that's not going to happen because the big guns of the industry think they know better.
So that's where I'm at: buying & reading books in Amazon's walled garden, or doing neither at all.
In Canada, I use my (now 8-year old Kobo) plus a public library app to borrow ebooks from our library system for free. Everything just works. It's terrific. I'm sorry to hear the same doesn't work where you are.
What exactly is the UX you want from an eReader? I find Kindles and Kobos are pretty similar. So I'm curious what exactly was better about Amazon. I personally find Amazon has worse text options, font sizing, line spacing etc.
I have purchased eBooks that were just bad OCRs, some publishers just don't care.
Kobo will also price match with Amazon, you get credit back and an extra 10% too.
I can't speak to the experience in France, but my experience with Kobo in the US has been that it's just as good as a Kindle in most respects, and better in some others, such as integration with Overdrive and Pocket. (My understanding is that Kindles have gotten better at Overdrive since I left that ecosystem.)
I mean, I can buy a book on a Kobo and read it legally in just as few taps, and I can also borrow a book on Kobo and read it legally.
Also, Kobo plays more nicely with Calibre, including a much nicer DRM-stripping management plugin, which seems relevant to the overall topic of this thread -- all the Kindle DRM removal plugin how-tos out there stopped working reliably for me years ago.
I stopped reading ebooks and actually moved to physical books, but from what I remember pirated books were super convenient. I had this giant library of tons and tons of scifi/fantasy books I once randomly copied from someone and it didn't even take that much storage space. It lasted me my childhood and I've only managed to read a small fraction of it.
Uhh what? There’s like four tabs for the Kobo interface, one specifically for books. You literally just click the book you want to read…Not sure what more you want from an ereader or how much easier it can get.
Oh finally! I have a Kindle Scribe, and it's really amazing hardware, but it's unusable for reading websites like Wikipedia and sending links to it using the Amazon bookmarklet is a pretty bad experience.
The biggest issue is the web browser doesn't have pagination, ie a next page button. *It only supports smooth scrolling using the touch screen*. Which on an e-ink display is a completely awful, insanely frustrating experience that I can't believe they ship it (and the Scribe is an 11th generation product).
Using a web browser to read pure text is a blurred mess that's takes several painful seconds to slowly scroll to the next page.
Since I bought the Kindle Scribe (big mistake due to the above issue), I've wanted to jailbreak it to install a non-terrible Wikipedia browser.
Eg the one available in the KOReader project -- the open-source alternative eink-optimized ebook app that is widely-supported across the eink ecosystem (including older Kindles).
Thanks for heads up that a jailbreak is finally available!
As far as I can tell, the main benefit of jailbreaking is to be able to install a reader that supports more ebook formats, since a stock Kindle can already browse the web and read ebooks from any source, but it only supports MOBI/AZW3, and the Send to Kindle EPUB converter is not very good. But it’s easy enough to use Calibre to do a lossless EPUB -> AZW3 conversion without the hassle of jailbreaking. Is there some other benefit that I’m missing?
This is especially obnoxious for books that are already DRM-free. For example, one can presently buy a Tor (the publisher, not the onion router) book from the Kindle store, download the azw3 file, use a tool like KindleUnpacker [0] to more or less losslessly convert it to ePub, and read it anywhere. There's no DRM to break!
[0] KindleUnpacker follows in the IMO utterly bizarre tradition in the epub tool writing scene of making it obvious how to run a really bad Tk UI wrapper and hiding the actual command-line tool in lib/. And of wanting an output directory instead of a filename. And of leaving a whole pile of unnecessary temporary files around. And of forcing you to look through the temporary crap to even find the output. Oh well; the actual output is excellent.
I think if decent companies like Tor ("this book is sold without drm") could unlock "download this book" in your kindle library, it would be a great thing.
also, in california with AB2426, I wonder if this would qualify as a purchase not a license.
For people already locked into Kindle, I don't know what to tell you. (Unless you DRM-crack, and get into the gray areas of the piracy culture that's creating much of the DRM problems.)
But it would be healthy for everyone if people supported a DRM-free and non-surveillance ebook ecosystem.
One solution I found is to buy ebooks as DRM-free EPUBs and PDFs, and read them in open source desktop tools and on my relatively decent PocketBook InkPad Lite.
> and get into the gray areas of the piracy culture that's creating much of the DRM problems
This is an interesting framing, mainly because it can be flipped 180 degrees around. "Shinier and more impregnable DRM just creates problems that lock you into certain devices and usage patterns, which simply create much of the gray area of piracy culture"
I mean, you're literally starting out by not trusting the person who fucking purchased your product and then furthermore also artificially limiting them in how they can use that content and on what devices!
Imagine if every marriage began with an un-shut-offable location tracker in your wedding band. You'd be complaining about the "cheating culture that has contributed to the need to install uncircumventable perma-trackers on the newly-married... and also, everyone who tries to disable them OBVIOUSLY just wants to cheat" /eye-roll
> (Unless you DRM-crack, and get into the gray areas of the piracy culture that's creating much of the DRM problems.)
Meh. Even if there was no piracy there'd be DRM. It's not only used to limit privacy but also how you can legitimately use stuff you bought. Like how many devices you can access it on. Or how many times you can view video content.
In fact I think the presence of piracy helps keep prices low. I'm sure Netflix would raise prices even more if they weren't losing customers to piracy every time they raise prices or add crap like ads.. And really, DRM does absolutely nothing to prevent this. It's not as if the latest shows aren't on the pirate bay hours after they appear on Netflix.
> But it would be healthy for everyone if people supported a DRM-free and non-surveillance ebook ecosystem.
That would be very nice yes, if there were one. I don't think there's anything like GOG for books. But yes I do always buy my games on GOG if they are available there.
> But it would be healthy for everyone if people supported a DRM-free and non-surveillance ebook ecosystem.
I try nearly every time. The book I want (usually sci-fi recommended to me by friends) is never available from any DRM free shop I can find.
I end up buying from Amazon because their DRM is the most convenient to remive. And I go to the effort to remove it because I want to keep the content I buy, not have it disappear when the DRM key holder decides to take it away from me.
You can always load 3rd-party DRM-free books and I don't see Amazon removing that. Their hardware and ecosystem aren't that much better than everyone else's.
I don’t really get the Kindle hype. Kobo is a vastly better experience and the unlimited plans are more affordable. Kobo is $8 a month, $10 for books and audiobooks. Kindle is $12 flat. Kobo has g drive and Dropbox integration. Also the e-readers use the same screens (minus the “colorsoft” which is still a e-ink product).
Kobo has a sideloading mode that disables all connected-services by default (no need for an account, no online store necessary). Highly recommended alternative.
I’ve tried leaving kindle but keep coming back because of how well it syncs side-loaded (via email) epub reading progress between the physical reader and the kindle app on my iPhone.
I recently got a Boox Palma, which I love, but the Android Kindle app can’t display time remaining in a chapter for emailed epubs. I find this very surprising, considering both the kindle hardware readers and iPhone kindle app have no problem doing this. Sharing this story in case someone else has run into this and identified a solution.
I recently got a Palma as well, but just had the display randomly break in my soft coat pocket (note screen and touch are totally fine, just the eink). I would recommend other people avoid them due to this random breakage.
I have a heap of graphic novels I bought for my kids that are basically unusable because Amazon moved everything into Kindle and I couldn't have them in a separate comixology app for my kids anymore and Kindle doesn't allow me to curate family books for kids as I wish. Lesson learned. No more Kindle/comixology/audible purchases in this household. I considered breaking the DRM but we never bought into their readers.
I think hard copies (not from Amazon) are the only reasonable non-infringing option for book lovers. Returning to real libraries to supplement individual purchases lets you access more content for your money and buying a physical copy that might be read once or twice is unsustainable.
If you have to do digital I think piracy is becoming the only reasonable answer. I always thought it was immoral to deprive authors of income if you could afford to do the right thing but with AI companies like Meta downloading terabytes of copyright content for their own commercial gain why should the rest of us feel guilty downloading for personal use?
> If you have to do digital I think piracy is becoming the only reasonable answer.
What I do is purchase the ebook and remove the DRM, so I can read it on whatever device I want. It may be illegal but would you really consider that piracy?
My library has an incredible selection of ebooks I can send straight to my Kindle. The process is less hassle than pirating, too. I get 90% or more of what I read on my Kindle from my library. The only books I buy are from a couple series I adore and always go back to and reference books. Those are few and far between.
This is a problem that can only be fixed by legislation. Other things being equal DRM that's convenient for the vast majority increases book sales and consumers aren't willing to pay enough more for DRM free books to cover the difference -- much less understand the difference between 'owning' books and 'if we feel like it' licenses. And even if a general (i.e. not O'REILLY) ebook/ereader vender just wanted to do the right thing it's far from clear you could write a license that is flexible enough to allow pivoting with changing market conditions, get good deals with publishers but not so flexible as to be meaningless. And it's hard to sell a more expensive DRM free option alongside since, as the DRM free price goes up each sale is more likely to be sold to a 'pirate'.
I have a medium sized collection of Kindle books. I stay in the ecosystem because I enjoy the convenience of being able to read on my phone and tablet, and I enjoy being able to write and sync notes and highlights.
I would have liked to have all the books on my hard drive, fully searchable. But it seems like it won’t be possible now? I guess I’ll have to make do with my notes.
I bought a Tolino vision color (a rebranded Kobo Libra Color with shittier software) a few months ago. If Amazon no longer allows me to download purchased books, I can no longer de-DRM them and read them offline on my phone, on my Tolino or on my computer. It seems that most stores outside Amazon have even shittier DRM than Amazon has. How am I going to be able to buy books in the future so I can actually read them?
I’m absolutely willing to pay for ebooks. I always did. For me, removal of the download feature will absolutely be a bookalypse.
Good reminder to all of us to check the dependencies from time to time. Services don't last forever, which is not a problem at all, if people enter into contract consciously. What's painful is overly relying on a service, and then having the rug pulled from underneath the feet.
I don't think that this instance is particularly painful, but the lesson is still the same. If it's important, it's worth to back up at least the metadata.
[+] [-] 42772827|1 year ago|reply
(1) This is the "Download and Transfer" option where Amazon allowed users to select books they had purchased a license to and download them from the Amazon website.
(2) The ability to transfer books from your computer to your Kindle using a USB cable is not affected.
(3) The ability to send non-Amazon-licensed ePubs using the Send to Kindle email feature is not affected.
[+] [-] wkat4242|1 year ago|reply
Well, it kinda is. If you can no longer download the books you paid for, you can't upload them over USB. That's what that feature on their website was meant for, in fact.
Of course you can still upload non-Amazon content yes. Which is probably what I'll end up doing. I won't buy books on Amazon anymore if I can't remove the DRM.
[+] [-] bo1024|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] spookybones|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jsbisviewtiful|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Yeul|1 year ago|reply
If they aren't interfering with (2) Amazon can do what it wants.
[+] [-] fractallyte|1 year ago|reply
In case anyone else needs to do something similar: Log in to your Amazon account > Manage Your Content and Devices
Copy the cookie and save it to a file ('cookie.txt'): https://github.com/yihong0618/Kindle_download_helper?tab=rea...
Execute the Python utility (this example accesses amazon.co.uk):
You can also download a JSON list containing details of all your Kindle books: There are other methods outlined in the README, but this worked best for me.I also extracted a list of cover URLs from the JSON file using a basic Python script (with output redirected to a file 'covers.txt'):
And then I used wget to download them all too: Of course, the books are still DRM'd, but it's trivial to DeDRM them later. The crucial thing was to get the files before it's too late![+] [-] addicted|1 year ago|reply
I bought a Kobo Clara years ago, and it supports regular MOBI and ePub files.
My book purchases are no longer liked with the reader and I’ve never had a problem in all these years. And this wasn’t even the best or best value for money device I could have bought.
Today there are so many other better alternatives in all price points and form factors.
[+] [-] wiether|1 year ago|reply
How are we supposed to do?
In three "taps" I buy a book and 10s later I start reading it. Legally. The device just works.
The alternatives? Libraries here (France) have a very limited offer of ebooks. Even for ebooks in English. I owned a Kobo circa 2013 and it was awful. I tried friend's devices more recently, and it's not the UX I expect from a "book".
A simple comparison; "Parable of the Sower", bought it for 3.49€ on amazon.fr, it's at 5.26€ on ebooks.com and it still got DRMs.
Even pirating is less convenient: some files are buggy, some files are weird OCR of physical books, you have to deal with the download and transfer...
And I just can't read physical books. I hate that.
So usually, if I really enjoy an ebook, I buy a physical copy in a local bookstore and give it to a friend/whoever I think is going to like it.
I would love an open ecosystem where I could rent ebooks from a library, and buy books that can be read wherever I want. But that's not going to happen because the big guns of the industry think they know better.
So that's where I'm at: buying & reading books in Amazon's walled garden, or doing neither at all.
[+] [-] debo_|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] goosedragons|1 year ago|reply
I have purchased eBooks that were just bad OCRs, some publishers just don't care.
Kobo will also price match with Amazon, you get credit back and an extra 10% too.
[+] [-] chipotle_coyote|1 year ago|reply
I mean, I can buy a book on a Kobo and read it legally in just as few taps, and I can also borrow a book on Kobo and read it legally.
Also, Kobo plays more nicely with Calibre, including a much nicer DRM-stripping management plugin, which seems relevant to the overall topic of this thread -- all the Kindle DRM removal plugin how-tos out there stopped working reliably for me years ago.
[+] [-] palata|1 year ago|reply
I got my Kindle around that time, even though I had actively looked for alternatives. Nothing seemed to compare then.
But I'm ready to believe that now in 2025, Kobo caught up? I read many comments here praising Kobo.
[+] [-] bambax|1 year ago|reply
Kindle store has those too.
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] yreg|1 year ago|reply
I stopped reading ebooks and actually moved to physical books, but from what I remember pirated books were super convenient. I had this giant library of tons and tons of scifi/fantasy books I once randomly copied from someone and it didn't even take that much storage space. It lasted me my childhood and I've only managed to read a small fraction of it.
[+] [-] syntaxing|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Retr0id|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] shasheene|1 year ago|reply
The biggest issue is the web browser doesn't have pagination, ie a next page button. *It only supports smooth scrolling using the touch screen*. Which on an e-ink display is a completely awful, insanely frustrating experience that I can't believe they ship it (and the Scribe is an 11th generation product).
Using a web browser to read pure text is a blurred mess that's takes several painful seconds to slowly scroll to the next page.
Since I bought the Kindle Scribe (big mistake due to the above issue), I've wanted to jailbreak it to install a non-terrible Wikipedia browser.
Eg the one available in the KOReader project -- the open-source alternative eink-optimized ebook app that is widely-supported across the eink ecosystem (including older Kindles).
Thanks for heads up that a jailbreak is finally available!
[+] [-] rafram|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] amluto|1 year ago|reply
[0] KindleUnpacker follows in the IMO utterly bizarre tradition in the epub tool writing scene of making it obvious how to run a really bad Tk UI wrapper and hiding the actual command-line tool in lib/. And of wanting an output directory instead of a filename. And of leaving a whole pile of unnecessary temporary files around. And of forcing you to look through the temporary crap to even find the output. Oh well; the actual output is excellent.
[+] [-] m463|1 year ago|reply
also, in california with AB2426, I wonder if this would qualify as a purchase not a license.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...
[+] [-] neilv|1 year ago|reply
But it would be healthy for everyone if people supported a DRM-free and non-surveillance ebook ecosystem.
One solution I found is to buy ebooks as DRM-free EPUBs and PDFs, and read them in open source desktop tools and on my relatively decent PocketBook InkPad Lite.
Some details at: https://www.neilvandyke.org/ebooks/
[+] [-] daveoc64|1 year ago|reply
I dream of a day when that's possible, but all of the massive publishers with over 80% of book marketshare insist on DRM.
[+] [-] pmarreck|1 year ago|reply
This is an interesting framing, mainly because it can be flipped 180 degrees around. "Shinier and more impregnable DRM just creates problems that lock you into certain devices and usage patterns, which simply create much of the gray area of piracy culture"
I mean, you're literally starting out by not trusting the person who fucking purchased your product and then furthermore also artificially limiting them in how they can use that content and on what devices!
Imagine if every marriage began with an un-shut-offable location tracker in your wedding band. You'd be complaining about the "cheating culture that has contributed to the need to install uncircumventable perma-trackers on the newly-married... and also, everyone who tries to disable them OBVIOUSLY just wants to cheat" /eye-roll
[+] [-] wkat4242|1 year ago|reply
Meh. Even if there was no piracy there'd be DRM. It's not only used to limit privacy but also how you can legitimately use stuff you bought. Like how many devices you can access it on. Or how many times you can view video content.
In fact I think the presence of piracy helps keep prices low. I'm sure Netflix would raise prices even more if they weren't losing customers to piracy every time they raise prices or add crap like ads.. And really, DRM does absolutely nothing to prevent this. It's not as if the latest shows aren't on the pirate bay hours after they appear on Netflix.
> But it would be healthy for everyone if people supported a DRM-free and non-surveillance ebook ecosystem.
That would be very nice yes, if there were one. I don't think there's anything like GOG for books. But yes I do always buy my games on GOG if they are available there.
[+] [-] mfashby|1 year ago|reply
I try nearly every time. The book I want (usually sci-fi recommended to me by friends) is never available from any DRM free shop I can find.
I end up buying from Amazon because their DRM is the most convenient to remive. And I go to the effort to remove it because I want to keep the content I buy, not have it disappear when the DRM key holder decides to take it away from me.
[+] [-] thayne|1 year ago|reply
Unfortunately, for many, many books, this isn't possible, at least legally.
[+] [-] loeg|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] uni_baconcat|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] syntaxing|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] gnabgib|1 year ago|reply
(120 points, 3 days ago, 93 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43041726
(50 points, 2 days ago, 23 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43046995
(120 points, 1 day ago, 101 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43058889
[+] [-] rcMgD2BwE72F|1 year ago|reply
https://blog.the-ebook-reader.com/2022/01/21/kobo-software-u...
[+] [-] samjohnson|1 year ago|reply
I recently got a Boox Palma, which I love, but the Android Kindle app can’t display time remaining in a chapter for emailed epubs. I find this very surprising, considering both the kindle hardware readers and iPhone kindle app have no problem doing this. Sharing this story in case someone else has run into this and identified a solution.
[+] [-] genericuser256|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] shirro|1 year ago|reply
I think hard copies (not from Amazon) are the only reasonable non-infringing option for book lovers. Returning to real libraries to supplement individual purchases lets you access more content for your money and buying a physical copy that might be read once or twice is unsustainable.
If you have to do digital I think piracy is becoming the only reasonable answer. I always thought it was immoral to deprive authors of income if you could afford to do the right thing but with AI companies like Meta downloading terabytes of copyright content for their own commercial gain why should the rest of us feel guilty downloading for personal use?
[+] [-] Hackbraten|1 year ago|reply
What I do is purchase the ebook and remove the DRM, so I can read it on whatever device I want. It may be illegal but would you really consider that piracy?
[+] [-] mcgrath_sh|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ChrisArchitect|1 year ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43039924
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43041726
[+] [-] hoppyhoppy2|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] TruePath|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] poisonborz|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] linotype|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] rocky1138|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] nindalf|1 year ago|reply
I would have liked to have all the books on my hard drive, fully searchable. But it seems like it won’t be possible now? I guess I’ll have to make do with my notes.
[+] [-] locusofself|1 year ago|reply
I understand the worry, but for me I was more worried about losing the ability to side-load books, which I don't think is being removed.
[+] [-] Hackbraten|1 year ago|reply
I’m absolutely willing to pay for ebooks. I always did. For me, removal of the download feature will absolutely be a bookalypse.
[+] [-] barbazoo|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] npteljes|1 year ago|reply
I don't think that this instance is particularly painful, but the lesson is still the same. If it's important, it's worth to back up at least the metadata.