Fucking Amazon, man. Why do they have to be this way?
I have quite a list of things I need to do today but it is now almost midday and I’ve not done any of them. Instead, I’ve sent 2.5 hours downloading and converting my Kindle books so I have useable backup copies. What was the urgency you ask? Well turns out I had missed the news (with being on holiday and just avoiding the internet) that Amazon has decided to remove the ability for users to manually download a copy of their purchased ebooks, and the deadline for this is 26th Feb… which is 3 days from now. Thank goodness I read Tracy Durell’s Weeknotes this morning! (Thank you Tracy!).
To be clear you obviously can still download the books you “buy” through the Amazon store but going forward the only way to do that will be over wi-fi. No more downloading files to your PC and then manually copying them to your device via USB. I expect this means that newer Kindle devices are going to be losing the USB port and moving to wireless charging as another way to stop people from handling the files on their devices. They also have a new file format that is nearly impossible to remove the DRM from to allow you to convert to more portable formats.
Why does this matter?
Well, I like to have a backup copy in my Calibre Library and I don’t like that Amazon mess around with the books in the Kindle store and can change an edition or delete it entirely any time they want (because you only buy a license, not the book). Mostly this is switching the cover to the horrible new one if there is a TV/Movie adaption or adding shit about “BookTok’s latest sensation” to the title, but given what is going on with US politics these days and that Jeff Bezos has “bent the knee” to “King” Trump… who knows where this is going.
At best this news just feels really icky.
Instructions to back up your current Kindle ebooks (while you still can!)
I did have a practice of manually downloading the .azw files from my account via the web and saving them to my PC as a backup, but they still had the DRM encoded so I would never be able to read them on my PC or any other Reader device on the future. They’ve made it so difficult to do that these days that I couldn’t be bothered to go the extra steps. But… this news has me considering if I’ll ever buy another Kindle device so I decided now was the time to figure that out!
Tracy very helpfully linked to this article regarding the announcement and this amazing Reddit thread that has all the instructions for how you can download copies of your eBooks, remove the DRM and use Calibre to convert to ePub or MOBI, or whatever your preference is.
It is a right faff about – you have to get an old version of the Kindle app for your desktop (and turn off your wifi to prevent it from updating!) and an older version of Calibre, and manually download one book at a time… but I got there in the end!
Am I going to keep using Kindle?
I don’t know… I understand you never buy the eBook you just have a license to read it, but since I never spend more than 99p in the Kindle store that doesn’t bother me too much.
Pros
- My Kindle Deals “hack” saves me huge amounts of money and has encouraged me to read more widely and many more contemporary books than I ever have done before.
- I don’t know if other eBook stores offer similar deals?!
- Yes, I know books are free from the Library but they have limited stock and big waiting lists which is a lot less convenient. Also, the last time I looked into this there wasn’t a way I could read borrowed eBooks on my Kindle/eReader, and I get a headache if I read on anything with an LED screen for long (like my phone or tablet). I might look into these options again though.
- I just really like reading on my Kindle Paperwhite with its light-up screen, and I find it more comfortable than paperbacks these days (and the cat prefers it). I love being able to easily highlight and make notes, and sync those into my Obsidian database. If I couldn’t do that I’d have to physically write notes and make highlights, and then type them up so reading and writing reviews would be a lot more time-consuming and would make reading a less relaxing activity.
- Maybe it is time to explore other Readers on the market!
- My Kindle automatically updates my Goodreads account with my currently reading, and I can update my progress with a couple of taps.
- I already have the device, it is perfectly fine and only two years old!
Cons
- I don’t own the eBooks, they are DRM locked and can only ever be read on an Amazon device which keeps me locked into Kindle forever.
- Amazon can delete or alter the book on my device whenever they want, which is fucking creepy.
- I do miss the old buttons to turn the page!
- It’s a pain in the arse if you put non-Amazon books on there and won’t allow device-only Collections any more.
- Amazon are a bad company and get worse all the time, in myriad ways.
Is anyone else going through this crisis? Are you sticking with Kindle and bearing the pain, or do you use a different eBook service and Reader?
I have never had a kindle – I do have the kindle app on my iPad, so have some kindle books. I’ve lost ebooks in the past because iBooks or Amazon remove the licence. It’s just part of the reason that I rarely buy ebooks. I mostly use it for books that are out of print and only available via ebook (though I will check if I can buy them direct from the publisher first) or books that I don’t want to pay physical book prices for. So these days, there is nothing in my ebooks list that I haven’t read and almost nothing that I care if I lose.
I’ve been working on this as well. I was already starting to get worried about the possibility of books disappearing and had been backing up my ebooks. The thing that was keeping me in that ecosystem was Whispersync for voice. No one else has a feature like it to sync an eBook with an Audiobook.
I think I got everything downloaded. After some experimentation, I was also able to get books from the Kobo store and Google Play books onto my Kindle Paperwhite.
I’ve decided to make my future eBook purchases from Kobo for now. I’d like to try one of their devices, but I decided that I don’t need to worry about using the Kindle I already have for now. I can still use it, I just won’t buy any more Kindle books.
I have a color eInk tablet by Onyx Boox, which runs Android and can run all the reader apps, but it doesn’t look as good as my Kindle screen. It might be because of the color eInk screen, though. I’d like to try one of their Black and White eReaders.
I’ve had a look at the Kobo store and they have good deals there so I think your plan is a good one Shannon!
Im sorry this happened to ebook readers. I wish you guys could but ebooks without Amazon or Apple. maybe directly from the authors? Anyway, good luck.