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Not buying another Kindle

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Re: Not buying another Kindle

#81

Post by dotdi »

I read a moderate amount I'd say, about 2 weeks average for a book, and I was using a very old and very beat-up but still functioning 4th gen Kindle until recently.

However, I woke up from my stupor when Micro$oft's eBook store closed and purged their library from under everybodies butts. Giving Amazon complete control over my library is a horrible thought, so I'm out.

I am now a happy Boox Go 10.3 + BookFusion user. Crisp screen, great battery life, full android with play store underneath. It syncs to my phone, has most of the bells and whistles I need in terms of reading, and it supports writing handwritten notes (albeit not onto the ebook itself; that's apparently too sci-fi even for 2026), and Bookfusion can sync notes into Obisidian vaults via an Obsidian plugin. I feel in control. I buy books from alternative sites with either no DRM to begin with, or where I'm confident I can remove it. Bookfusion costs me 20EUR a year.

I'm fairly happy with my setup.

EDIT: yes, I'm aware Boox are not the good guys in this story. I have not signed up to any of their services - the device is perfectly usable without that. I turned their book shop off immediately, and I do monitor+block the Chinese IPs it's trying to reach on my router.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#82

Post by maratc »

com2kid wrote: post #38
andrewla wrote: post #17

In my view the death of the eReader is just the price fixing on ebooks -- that ebooks are sold at par with at a premium to physical books still bothers me, and I think is responsible for the fact that the Kindle is dying -- Amazon can't move enough ebooks at these price levels to be worth investing anything in interested new hardware.

A number of authors have written about this and the tldr is that ebooks aren't really any cheaper to produce. Paper is cheap. Shipping is cheap. The incremental cost of making a physical book is so small as to be noise in the overall book price.

When you consider that different ebooks and different font selection can result in lines and pages breaking at any random place, ebooks may actually be more expensive to produce.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#83

Post by jgeada »

com2kid wrote: post #38
andrewla wrote: post #17

In my view the death of the eReader is just the price fixing on ebooks -- that ebooks are sold at par with at a premium to physical books still bothers me, and I think is responsible for the fact that the Kindle is dying -- Amazon can't move enough ebooks at these price levels to be worth investing anything in interested new hardware.

A number of authors have written about this and the tldr is that ebooks aren't really any cheaper to produce. Paper is cheap. Shipping is cheap. The incremental cost of making a physical book is so small as to be noise in the overall book price.

If that is true, of which I remain highly skeptical, then it implies that books are wildly inefficient to produce.

What on earth are all the middlemen between book being authored and it being sold to a customer that add so much overhead that the cost of printing and logistics disappears in the noise???

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#84

Post by Groxx »

tedivm wrote: post #71
nerdix wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you can't do that on a kindle. They have a "send to kindle" feature that allows you to add non-Amazon purchased ebooks to your library. But that requires support from the backend (and an internet connection). I'm assuming send to kindle will no longer be supported on these older devices.

You can send books to your kindle over USB, and I do that all the time for larger books that are above the size limit on the email system. The big problem is that Amazon no longer allows you to download books from their site to your desktop, so you have no way to actually get a purchased book and send it to the kindle even over USB. However, if you buy non-DRM books from other book sellers you won't have this problem…

They block you from doing this if you're not logged in (as I discovered after wiping and rooting one to give to a friend recently).

As evidence, note that instructions for rooting them requires the device to be registered - this is because it won't be accessible over USB until you do so: https://kindlemodding.org/jailbreaking/WinterBreak/

So if you can't log in...

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#85

Post by kemayo »

delecti wrote: post #69
fmajid wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I don't have a Kindle, so I can't verify this, but I am basing this from reporting: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c98k91yy4z4o "The move will mean owners of older Kindles, including its earliest models such as the Kindle Touch and some Kindle Fire tablets, will be unable to download new e-books." For a more tech-oriented site, according to Ars Technica Amazon removed the ability to upload over USB: https:…

Nothing you've quoted is wrong per se, but it's also not the full story. Amazon removed the ability to download files from them to your computer. And they will soon be removing the ability to download files from them directly to older kindle devices. You can still download a MOBI or EPUB from anywhere else online (though I think some older kindles don't support EPUB) and transfer it via USB, and will still be able to…

Even new Kindles don't support EPUB, per-se. The Send-to-Kindle service started supporting EPUB, and converts them to AZW3 or KFX for actual delivery to your Kindle.

But you cannot just USB an EPUB onto your Kindle without any conversion process. (Calibre does make it very simple, though.)

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#86

Post by pickleglitch »

two_cents wrote: post #73

> We are still dealing with a home screen that prioritizes advertisements and promoted recommendations over your actual library. Navigating a large collection of books remains a chore, with sluggish animations and a lack of robust folder management that has been a standard feature on rival devices for years. Such claims make me think that this article is biased. There are two tabs on main Kindle screen - Home and Lib…

Kindle's are cheaper because Amazon sells them at or below cost to lure users into their ecosystem. This helps them control the market from both the seller and consumer sides, in keeping with their overall business model. Add to that the fact that you don't really own the e-books you "buy" through Amazon, just like pretty much every other digital "purchase" these days, and that's enough for me to never buy one.

Of course, the general state of e-book devices is pretty abysmal. There are no good options I'm aware of.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#87

Post by precompute »

The big problem here is that devices can not be re-registered. It's a mean move from Amazon, and will make it difficult to re-enable extra features. However, those devices have multiple jailbreak methods available, so there's really no loss if you can take that extra step. All books are presumably still available on the kindle app / website, and because you already bought them you can pirate them.

Kindles have the best text rendering (imo), and calibre can be used to sideload books. My PW1 had stellar text rendering. My next kindle, Kindle 10 had a lower PPI but decent text rendering. I now use a PW5 and the text is flawless.

Kindle's UI does suck, though. Very slow and the keyboard is glacial. Still, page turns are zippy and it collects highlights in a central file, which is very handy.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#88

Post by lokar »

LeCompteSftware wrote: post #78
jmyeet wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read that? You’re picking out one cost: printing. Scroll down to where the cost breakdown of a paperback is. More than $5 once you include distribution and retailing. Or, as some might say, more than 50% of $10.

Ok, then the other thing you're missing is that distributors also get a chunk of the ebook. You said ebooks have "no middlemen" but that's blatantly false, Amazon is the emperor of ebook middlemen. I suppose publishers could try selling ebooks directly but then they lose the Kindle platform + Amazon's reach, so Amazon charges for that service. They are a middleman.

And in some sense the publisher is a middleman. While authors can sell directly, they rarely do. All of the books I have read had editors, publishers, etc. Not just the author writing and uploading.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#89

Post by zikduruqe »

fmajid wrote: post #68

One way Amazon could make up for this is by unlocking these Kindles' boot loaders so owners can install KOreader instead. I am not holding my breath.

https://kindlemodding.org

Depending on your model or version, it's not hard.

I'm rocking a newer Paperwhite Special Edition, with KOreader installed.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#90

Post by wafflemaker »

fsh wrote: post #65
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's also not mentioned is that the discontinued devices don't support KFX. KFX is the modern kindle format, AZW meanwhile is heavily PDF-based. KFX was designed ground-up by Amazon, supports every modern feature they could think of, and presumably couldn't be backported to 2013 and earlier Kindles; AZW meanwhile was basically a wrapper around a subset of PDF. KFX is a complete redo, notable enough it's what "Enhan…

AZW is clearly not PDF based. Try opening an actual PDF on a Kindle and compare the experience.

I had a 12y old Paperwhite 2gen and have an 11th gen one.

PDF were just not meant to be viewed on the old one, but the 11th gen handles them surprisingly well.

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