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.
Jokes on you I pirates mine!
“I’m aware, Amazon just hosts things I got from libgen and the #bookz undernet irc channel.”
Like hell I don’t. Calibre plus NoDRM says otherwise.
Buy, rip, refund, repeat.
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.
I pirate first, and when I’ve really enjoyed a book I add a physical copy to the collection. I just can’t get behind paying for digital shit, for the reasons enumerated in this thread here. I just wish there was more direct-to-creator payments. Music and literature are perfect mediums to give directly to the artists who create it. I don’t give a fuck about whoever paid fir the digital ink. Maybe the record people get a little money.
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).
Buy, rip,
refund, repeat.i support this against amazon, also kindly put it on libgen or anna’s for humanity’s benefit
I’ve used Calibre and stripped DRM off eBooks, definitely recommend.
It’s a really nice app. Very customizable.
Sounds like a lot of work. Since , and I am showing my age, limewire I will just put on my pirate hat and read as I decide.
Takes a small effort to set up (install Calibre, install NoDRM plugin, apply Kindle serial to plugin), but once it’s done, the rest is literally drag and drop, it removes DRM from your books automagically.
Does that still work? Last time I tried I had no luck
For Kindle specific ripping, I think it changed a year back and now you need to have a kindle connected before the Amazon servers poop out some magic unlock key/the whole book. After that you’re golden, but during the rip you need a kindle device…
They explain the Kindle difference when using Calibre DeDRM tool in this article.
The last instructions I had involved downloading an older version of the Kindle desktop app to grab the books, and I couldn’t find that one except on style rather sketchy looking sites that I didn’t trust running executables from.
This looks like it might be a more effective solution. Thanks!
I haven’t used Kindles personally ever, but I helped my neighbor export their kindle collection a few years ago.
It dumped it into mobi files to use with calibre. Then from there, you can convert them into epubs.
I recall it being straightforward. Probably something a kindle owner should do periodically to back up their collection.
Another problem with DRM’d platforms is that you don’t really know how long this will be easy or even viable. I recall these tools breaking in the past as Amazon changed their encryption, and it took time for them to be updated.
For anyone with a large library on Kindle, Audible, or any other DRM-infested platform, I recommend stripping that DRM sooner rather than later. You might think “I can always do it later” but there’s no guarantee that will be true.
Also, shoutout to ebooks.com for having a dedicated DRM-free section and a simple checkbox to filter search results to only show DRM-free items. Not sure where to go for DRM-free audiobooks though. Anyone got suggestions? Personally I will simply not buy books with DRM, regardless of how easy it might be to crack it. If I’m going to have to break the law anyway (thanks, DMCA!), I might as well pirate it and find some other way to toss the author a few bucks.
I use downpour.com for drm-free audiobooks. They let you straight up download the mb4 files haha it’s awesome.
It’s such a win-win b/c I get to buy audiobooks drm-free and I get to avoid supporting audible which has terrible business practices such as locking authors in exclusive deals.
Also thanks for the ebooks.com recommendation! I was reading this thread specifically to see if anyone knew of a good place online to buy drm-free ebooks :)
You can get Audiobooks from Spotify using the app Soundbound. You need to insert a list of plugins, then it works.
Apart from that, youtube? Or sailing the high seas?
My understanding is they arent mobi files anymore but a proprietary DRM format. That being said, there are many wonderful calibre plugins that break the drm.
FWIW, Amazon deprecated mobi files recently and epub is the new “sideload” standard. You still have to email the file to the kindle address to be able to read them, or convert to azw3.
If you’re already using Calibre, check out Calibre-Web, which essentially uses a Calibre database as the back end. The interface is so much nicer than Calibre.
You can use an USB cable to upload files to the Kindle, the @kindle email address is just a convenience thing. Calibre is great for converting to a compatible format.
Yeah, AZW3 was the format I was thinking of. For things purchased from the amazon store for the kindle they will be in that format. If you want to move your amazon books library elsewhere you have to use some funky plugins for calibre to convert them to a standard format like mobi or epub
MOBI has been deprecated for a long time. Standard formats now are AZW3 (KF8) and KFX. They’re a bit more advanced than MOBI, and thank goodness, since it was a terrible format. AZW3 is essentially a MOBI/EPUB container, and I believe KFX is equivalent to EPUB2, possibly with some EPUB3 features.
It’s better to keep them as mobi files than converting to epub. Mobi works on almost every device, and converting to epub can always result in messed up formatting or chapters.
If you absolutely have to convert the files to epub for some reason, at least keep the original mobi files as well
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
Thank you, I’ll find my way :)
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?
He who fights with monsters.
Or The Wandering Inn. It’s a slow burn, but it burns for ages.
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.
Not Steam/Valve but others will surely try something.
Example: Best case scenario happened to Rocket League.Yeah, while Gaben is still at the helm…
Kobo and epub only. Anything else, you don’t own and you shouldn’t pay for it.
deleted by creator
Is it an epub download? Anything else is DRM and thus useless.
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.
I just want a nice eReader that I can put something like Alpine on.
I use Calibre to remove the DRM from all ebooks I buy. Not that I buy a lot of them, but hell if I’ll let Amazon be the keeper of the keys.
Yup, making a DRM-free backup somewhere is the only way to protect the content you paid for from the whims of the overlords.
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.
Edit: So, this is out of date info. There’s a fork and it works with a fairly recent version of the PC app. Basically no fuss.
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.
Yaar, matey.
I hate that pirating is the ONLY way to even semi own what you buy. Bought an album off Bandcamp (DRM free music) and when one of the songs on that album got in a pointless argument about copyright and got taken down from my Spotify playlists.
Songs being taken off of Spotify is really common if you’re into older stuff as the rights get passed on when the artist dies. Though in this case it was a year old album.
I was glad I bought it DRM free as I thought they could only unlist it from the store, not from libraries… until I saw it was gone there too.
I payed MONEY for them to take it out of my library on a DRM free site. That’s like them taking my music CD and scratching it with sandpaper.Pirating literally gives me the same experience as buying it for literally no issue. (except the lossless files but who cares)
For ebooks in particular, owning what you buy isn’t that difficult though. You can legally buy DRM protected epubs in a lot of online book stores and then use the software calibre (open source) to strip the DRM. Much easier than with music, movies or software.
Some songs get taken down and relisted under different albums. I’ve had this happen with a lot of lofi music I thought was gone. Worth double checking!
Yes, most Kindles allow you to load your own PDFs and .ebook files, so pirating them is inconsequential.
I‘d recommend the software calibre. Great for managing your ebook library and it can convert epub into amazons azw, mobi or kfx formats (depending on which generation kindle you have). With the right plugin you can even create WordWise data for your kindle-converted ebooks.
You don’t even necessarily need to illegally download the books, as calibre can also handle the DRM of .ebub books you bought from almost any store. Of course, sailing the seven seas is still always an option though.
🏴☠️
As someone who publishes on Amazon if you buy my book and Amazon takes it from you PM I will send said customer a epub version for free.
I’m an author of two books, and whenever someone asks me for a copy (or even says they want to read it), I straight-up hand them a free ebook. I just want people to read me.
My wife wrote a book and brought copies to sell. Someone asked her if she brought ones to sell and my wife said yes. Later when we meet with her she’s like “you’re sure I can have this?” My wife says something like “yeah I brought enough” and then she never paid lol. Even worse, the next day she wasn’t randomly holding a $20 bill and put it away. Either she’s the most rude and insanely conniving person ever or our life was a sitcom because wtf. There’s more context but I don’t wanna yap too long. My wife almost even took the money out of her hand thinking she just didn’t have cash the night before.
All that said, you deserve to get paid for your work!
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.