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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

#91

Post by lostlogin »

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.

Ditto for Calibre Web. Clunky, but effective.

I wish there was a way to add books to a ‘shelf’ (a collection, which you can sync to a device) without having to open each book and add. I want to go Select + Select + Select > Add > Sync.

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

#92

Post by lostlogin »

lores wrote: post #23

These convenient and cheap book/game/video platforms sure killed piracy. Now that piracy's gone forever, we can enshittify the whole thing again! At least I imagine that's how it went in the meeting of 35 year-old corporate suits.

> These convenient and cheap book/game/video platforms sure killed piracy.

The first rule of fight club is that you don’t talk about fight club. Though don’t have to deny its existence.

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

#93

Post by snailmailman »

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.

This is absolutely what it is. The easiest way to strip drm from a kindle book was through this app. You download the file, strip the drm, done. I think newer versions of the app made it harder? But old versions were still supported.

The more locked down kindle mobile apps and kindle e-readers make it more difficult, but stripping the drm will always be possible.

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

#94

Post by UltraSane »

sbarre wrote: post #56
jm4 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I suspect at least some of this comes from publisher pressure. An acquaintance works for one of the big global book publishers and his general sense from upper management is that they still hate having to sell digital books. It feels like the last major media industry that is holding out against a "future" that has been here for a long time already.

It is really easy to buy a book, cut the spine off and feed the pages into a sheet fed scanner.

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

#96

Post by therealdrag0 »

fooqux wrote: post #66
asveikau wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped doing Kindle purchases in the last few years because I sensed they were going in this direction. There are tons of vendors that will give you an epub of most titles. They often come with Adobe DRM but the UX of breaking that is even easier than how it used to be with Kindle.

Sadly the Kindle Unlimited program has gotten so popular that if you wish to read anything independent, you basically can't without using Kindle.

Similar with “only on Audible” audio books. Not a majority yet I don’t think, but it’s a big chunk of books restricted to Amazon platform.

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

#97

Post by UltraSane »

estimator7292 wrote: post #73
UltraSane wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

OCR'd ebooks are universally trash. For one, all formatting is gone. Anything in the book other than ASCII characters will vanish. You lose links within the book and all other advanced features. And OCR is generally just not accurate enough and still makes very visible mistakes throughout the text. Have you read many OCR'd ebooks? I have, and every single one was massively inferior. Most I would consider barely reada…

For books that you want to keep the formatting the best option is to use Adobe Acrobat Pro and its Editable Text and Images feature. This replaces the scanned letters with a custom TrueType font. I used this in college to scan textbooks and it worked really well. Modern OCR on books is incredibly accurate.

see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhJ9zqY8Da0

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

#98

Post by abawany »

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.

the drm is the reason why I never bought any kindle along with the relatively small non-expandable onboard storage, though the dx was tempting to me for a bit. I've stuck with Kobo, Pocketbook, and reMarkable and have been happy with them.

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

#99

Post by elabajaba »

lostlogin wrote: post #86
n8henrie wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly disagree. If it's doing well enough for the owner then it's doing well enough. I don't understand how one can tell someone else that their computer is unacceptably slow for that other individual's personal use. This is a really unfortunate move by Amazon. My next e-reader will be one that I own (instead of just rent). Glad that I took the time to jailbreak and pause updates on my 2017 kindle paperwhite whi…

Kobo, syncing with a home library (CalibreWeb) works well. I do miss physical buttons a little, but that’s minor gripe.

You do know that both the Kobo Libra and Sage have physical buttons, right?

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

#100

Post by carlosjobim »

jm4 wrote: post #48
UltraSane wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's to stop people from seeding new books to shadow libraries. It's not as easy to find new books on AA as on Amazon.
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