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Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

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Re: Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

#41

Post by [deleted] »

dml2135 wrote: post #38
nightski wrote: post #27

I have a smattering of books on Kindle, mostly fiction/novels. But the vast majority of my book conllection consists of non-fiction/textbooks and I recently switched to Booklore on my NAS. I have over 900 textbooks and can access them anywhere via a WireGuard VPN. It's so slick! Booklore seems great, but I'll admit there may be even better options. However this is the future of books for me. I'd like to start replaci…

There was some whole blowup with Booklore over it being vibecoded by a single maintainer recently. I think the project has changed ownership since then, but be cautious. I use Calibre + Calibre Web. Definitely a bit old and clunky, but reliable.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

#42

Post by UltraSane »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #5

Combined with the announcement that they're killing the old Kindles as well...this is 100% about preventing people from liberating DRM from their books. Full stop. They are closing each and every remaining hole.

Which is silly because you can easily just use OCR and screenshots to create DRM free versions of Kindle books.

Re: Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

#43

Post by EA-3167 »

beej71 wrote: post #24
Multicomp wrote: post #6

I never bought into Kindle because of this lockdown attitude. I buy audiobooks from audiobookstore and ebooks from google play books when lazy and itch and the other usual independent sites that sell drm free files when I'm not doing a jit in time purchase. I have a kindle I USB sideload or put files on sd card, because it has a physical keyboard. But with the state of digital goods disrepect for the customer and loc…

The Kindle isn't a bad device on its own. Personally I use a Kobo. But I never pay for any ebook that I can't keep indefinitely one way or another. I also have an old Kindle 4 that needs to be jailbroken before the May 30th deadline. Maybe I'll do that today. Gets you out of the ecosystem. And old Kindles can be found pretty cheap.

When Amazon started locking it all down last year I bailed on their ecosystem for Kobo’s store, but I use a Boox device. As long as I can back it up in any format I’m happy, and as soon as Amazon crossed that line they lost my business.

Re: Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

#44

Post by Washuu »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #32
Washuu wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not necessarily? There was a post just a year ago on how somebody jailbroke the kindle books from the web UI. I used that research to build something similar. It only works for manga and comics right now, but I have been tinkering with implementing glyph support as well to be able to handle full books. https://github.com/Alexia/kandle-downloader The original research is here, but the web site is down right now. htt…

Probably not the best place to ping for technical support, but, since you claim to be the author, and I don't see any "Issues" on your GH... Any idea why your script does not seem to flag as a valid greasemonkey script when I try to use it in the Falkon (KDE) browser? Even if I attempt to add it manually, the script then disappears from my gm scripts.

> I don't see any "Issues" on your GH...

Issues and PRs are available to open.(I just have not gotten any yet.)

> Any idea why your script does not seem to flag as a valid greasemonkey script when I try to use it in the Falkon (KDE) browser?

Honestly, no idea. I have only tested it with Tampermonkey on Firefox. Manually installing it should still work.

Re: Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

#45

Post by chromacity »

shrubble wrote: post #26

After Anthropic wholesale pirated millions of books, and got only a slap on the wrist and no jail time, and Meta did almost the same, I've decided that "Anna's" plus used physical books plus printed new books are the right combination.

It's kinda poetic that in the entire process, authors get screwed thrice. First, by the publishers and retailers, who keep 80% of the revenue. Then, by the hacker culture that enables widespread, institutionalized book piracy for the sake of "information wanting to be free". And finally, by the same hacker culture gone corporate, where "grown-up" geeks conclude that, since we already have all these pirated works out there, what's the harm of training LLMs on that.

Music is quite similar, and I've actually seen piracy justified by saying that "eh, the musicians are screwed either way". And of course, that piracy enabled suno.ai, which is now making sure that the musicians are really screwed.

Re: Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

#46

Post by bee_rider »

sgiratch wrote: post #10
echelon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they're killing the old Kindles as well Wait, what? What's the scope, and when does it happen?

I got this April 8th: "Dear Customer, Thank you for being a longtime Kindle customer. We're glad our devices have served you well for as long as they have. Starting May 20, 2026 — 14 to 18 years after their initial launches — we are discontinuing support for Kindle devices released in 2012 or earlier. Here's what this means for you: You can continue to read books already downloaded on these devices, but you will not…

It’s sort of funny that this kind of thing could be, not just something that they will probably just get away with, but totally uncontested and not even surprising really. Just sorta like, yeah, obviously you don’t own your library and they’ll cut off access to it whenever they want!

Re: Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

#47

Post by tlavoie »

unethical_ban wrote: post #22
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily? There was a post just a year ago on how somebody jailbroke the kindle books from the web UI. I think the more plausible and likely explanations are: 1. Kindles take a beating when people actually use them instead of putting them in a drawer. Not many older kindles are still in circulation that are old + used. How good is a 14 year old lithium battery at best doing? 2. Added to the above, how is a 14…

I still own my voyage from 2014 era. Amazon forcing new formats is their choice. Deprecating old kindles is a choice. This is all about ending people's ability to remove DRM from books they bought. I'll never own a kindle again. Does anyone know which platforms work with Calibre De-DRM? Or do we need to build a screen cap tool for transforming books to an open format?

I've had good luck with my Kobo, for those books bought through their store. (I strip DRM from everything I can, if I can't buy without in the first place.)

Re: Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

#48

Post by jm4 »

UltraSane wrote: post #42
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #5

Combined with the announcement that they're killing the old Kindles as well...this is 100% about preventing people from liberating DRM from their books. Full stop. They are closing each and every remaining hole.

Which is silly because you can easily just use OCR and screenshots to create DRM free versions of Kindle books.

Not to mention it’s as easy to download books from Anna’s Archive as it is to buy them from Amazon. It’s weird going through so much effort to lock down books people already paid for.

I wonder how much this is about making it difficult for people to migrate to another platform. I recently switched to Kobo and the reader is far superior to Kindle. I had a hell of a time moving my library though.

Re: Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

#49

Post by chatmasta »

sgiratch wrote: post #10
echelon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they're killing the old Kindles as well Wait, what? What's the scope, and when does it happen?

I got this April 8th: "Dear Customer, Thank you for being a longtime Kindle customer. We're glad our devices have served you well for as long as they have. Starting May 20, 2026 — 14 to 18 years after their initial launches — we are discontinuing support for Kindle devices released in 2012 or earlier. Here's what this means for you: You can continue to read books already downloaded on these devices, but you will not…

wtf. I’ve had my kindle since 2011, the battery still lasts weeks, it works perfectly, and I frequently praise Amazon for this. wtf.

Will I be able to load books via USB? Or there is some new DRM the kindle won’t be able to decrypt?

Re: Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

#50

Post by stryan »

Zanni wrote: post #15
Multicomp wrote: post #6

I never bought into Kindle because of this lockdown attitude. I buy audiobooks from audiobookstore and ebooks from google play books when lazy and itch and the other usual independent sites that sell drm free files when I'm not doing a jit in time purchase. I have a kindle I USB sideload or put files on sd card, because it has a physical keyboard. But with the state of digital goods disrepect for the customer and loc…

I used to feel this way, but I reconsidered my threat model. You know what format is "locked in"? Physical books. Can only exist in one location at a time. If you loan it out, you can't read it until it's returned. Subject to theft, fire, rot, bugs or simply being lost. There are aspects of Kindle I don't love--the constantly changing cover art for books I've purchased--but I've never run into an actual problem. I've…

You can copy physical books for storage/otherwise personal use IIRC so it's not quite as locked down as a DRMd book. Not sure what the legal state of hand copying a book and then loaning it out as it probably doesn't come up much.
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