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The Bitter Reality of Ebooks and the Kindle Model

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Re: The Bitter Reality of Ebooks and the Kindle Model

#21

Post by abdullahkhalids »

DennisP wrote: post #10
Barrin92 wrote: post #7

All true but at the end of the day, just buy a physical copy to support the author ,download the ebook from libgen or whatever and just use the kindle as hardware. In some way I admire people who try to abide by all the 50 pages of legalese you're forced to agree to but I couldn't be bothered with it. Especially all the books she lost that were associated with the account. If anyone had bought something from me once…

If you're downloading from libgen anyway, you might as well buy the kindle version to support the author, instead of the dead trees. Or any other ebook, or the audible.

One solution is to buy and donate a copy of the book to a local library.

Cory Doctorow actually had a system for this for his earlier books for matching teachers who wanted hardcopies of his books and donators who wanted to "pay" Cory in some way [1].

[1] https://craphound.com/content/donate/

Re: The Bitter Reality of Ebooks and the Kindle Model

#22

Post by javajosh »

dwheeler wrote: post #15

It should be illegal to say "buy" when you don't get full rights. Call it "rent" or "lease", but "buy" should only mean "buy".

I agree with this. I think that current Kindle users have a valid class action lawsuit against Amazon. It's fraud. And if that lawsuit fails, then it only adds fuel to the antitrust fire.

Re: The Bitter Reality of Ebooks and the Kindle Model

#23

Post by vunderba »

drakenot wrote: post #19
kemayo wrote: post #5

Regarding taking your Kindle books with you... the standard recommendation is to use the DeDRM plugin[1] for Calibre to convert your DRM'd books into plain old ePUBs. My understanding (I'm not a lawyer) is that this is perfectly legal to do in the US, because you're allowed to remove DRM from content you've purchased (a license to) for personal use. [1]: https://github.com/noDRM/DeDRM_tools

This doesn’t work anymore with the latest version of Kindle DRM unfortunately. It has been changed substantially

This is only going to help a few people, but if you're still on one of the older kindles, such as the old original kindle paperwhite, when you ask for the file, you can request it for these older devices, and the book format will have the old DRM which can easily be stripped.

Re: The Bitter Reality of Ebooks and the Kindle Model

#24

Post by mewse-hn »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #20
drakenot wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn’t work anymore with the latest version of Kindle DRM unfortunately. It has been changed substantially

That's why the Kobo Libra 2 is superior especially the sunken screen which is more paper like than any other e reader I tried including Kindles.

Yeah that's the device I use. Side-load books and side-step DRM

Re: The Bitter Reality of Ebooks and the Kindle Model

#29

Post by type0 »

davidw wrote: post #13

Some valid points here, but there's also a little bit to be said for the stability of Amazon. For now, at least. I've bought an ebook or two directly from the author and I'm not sure I could find them any more, so it feels more like my money went up in smoke. Another thing I don't love about those "buy it from me directly" people is they're not submitting their work to reviews. Yes, there are problems with review sys…

> there's also a little bit to be said for the stability of Amazon

What do you mean?

Microsoft is a financially stable company as well and they closed their eBook Store

https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-ebook-apocalypse-drm/

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