> In such a scenario, maybe it would be a good idea to keep a backup of all your Kindle titles on your PC or a compatible storage medium while Amazon is still hanging on with the AZW format.
No maybe here. If they block the export to USB method, then your “owned” content is locked into kindle readers permanently.
The time to backup your library into Calibre is now, before they lock you out of your content. After you’re locked out is too late.
This change locks you out of the subscription content, yes.
The author went on to suggest a likely next move for amazon was to apply the same restriction for your own books, and that maybe you should create backups in that scenario. This is the section I was quoting.
If you believe the authors suggestion that amazon will take these next steps, as I do, then the suggestion to “maybe” backup your content in that scenario is flawed. Once they lock you out it’s too late — backing it up now is the correct response.
I've been on the fence regarding my next ereading move for a while now. Amazon has been continuing its Apple-ification of the Kindle ecosystem by shutting down systems, APIs, and features that made it open and accessible. I am sure most people won't care, and the current state will continue to appeal to a certain kind of mindset that is only interested in the consumption aspect (or worse, the shilling for such ecosystems).
Not that the rest of the industry is a great place at the moment. All major ebook sources are DRMd and locked, and that includes libraries, which have traditionally been associated with public spaces and openness.
I have heard that Kobos are becoming a more viable alternative as a reading device, and that they are a little more open. It works with Calibre and Calibre-Web. I will now be researching a Kobo device for this year, and although I am 'voting with my wallet', I don't think it will make much of a difference being a single drop among millions going the other way.
Kindle devices now support the open epub format which is a improvement at least. Kobo devices come chained to Rakuten so it's not a big enough difference for me to consider switching... for now.
They only kind of support epub - you can now email a drm-free epub file to your "Send to Kindle" email address but it will be converted to a different format before being sent to your device.
You still can't load or read epubs directly on Kindles.
Plenty. It doesn't support DRM'd ePubs adding an extra layer of complexity, Amazon doesn't allow "personal documents" sent via email to have covers and they are picky about ePub support and sometimes book conversions will fail but would otherwise work in a native ePub reader.
In case you haven’t, check out the Supernote. It is amazing if you like annotating/highlighting etc. Only big downside is no backlight, but a neck light has made the transition easy for me and the annotation capabilities well, we’ll worth it.
Just to clarify, you can still use the Kindle for books purchased elsewhere or rented at a library. This article is specifically a restriction on "Kindle Unlimited" which is a spotify-like subscription for books.
Without this subscription, the Kindle still allows standard one-off downloads from the Amazon store (no surprise). But it can also accept epub and mobi file formats coming from anywhere. You can plug the Kindle in with a usb cable and move files over directly like a mass storage device. Alternatively, it offers a free "wireless transfer" service where you email epub, pbf, or mobi files to a randomly generated email address unique to your device. I use the email service frequently to transfer ePub files I get elsewhere and it works flawlessly. You send the email and open the kindle and it generally shows up in your library on the device near-instantly. It's very good.
If you use Calibre to manage your ebooks, it has a "send to Kindle" button, which is just using this email wireless transfer tool under the hood. You input your unique email address into Calibre and then when you click the "Send to Kindle" button that's how it works and it works well.
As mentioned earlier you can also transfer via usb. The newest Kindles also have USB-C which was a welcome addition.
Lastly I use my Kindle with books rented at the library. You just need a library card and a "Libby" account. The integration is a first-party integration, so no surprise it works essentially natively with Kindle. You choose an ebook at your local library and read it on your Kindle. The Kindle will even show you details about when the book is due and you can return it from the Kindle. It's all very good.
I know Kobo is considered more open because its not tied to Amazon. But I am a heavy Kindle user and have never felt weighed down by it being an Amazon device. I read books from a variety of sources. I buy books (computer books usually) from independent creators and I will send ePubs to Kindle, I will read books loaned from the library and I will also sometimes buy books directly from Amazon. The Kobo gives you the same functionality for the first two, but not the ease of purchasing from Amazon. Amazon is the largest book vendor in the world, so like it or not, I find myself still buying from there, so its nice to have that option.
I admit I have never paid for the Kindle Unlimited subscription. Its mostly low-quality novels pumped out by authors who publish 3-12 books a year. It is incredibly popular among Romance Novel readers (the largest genre of published books), but there are also lots of mystery and sci-fi books on there. But these aren't top quality NYTimes Top Selling books, they are low-rate airport novels in my experience.
For whatever reason Overdrive only works with Kindles in the U.S. Other countries it's ePub devices only. They also don't natively support ePub and their email conversion system thing can be picky and will do mean things like strip the cover off while simultaneously mucking with apostrophes for some reason.
Buying from Kobo is easy, it can be done on device just like on Kindle and when Google allowed it you could buy books in the Android app. Plus you can use other ePub stores like Google Play without even removing the DRM which is nice.
I currently use a Boox a device but Kobo has the best reader software IMO. Amazon just doesn't have enough font/format customization without jailbreaking and I really shouldn't have to do that to find a comfortable font size.
I got my wife a Boox and it’s just a modified Android (watching a YouTube video on an e-ink screen is good for a laugh). She likes it a lot. It’s nice too since it’s completely open so you can add whatever apps you want to it.
I just switched from a first generation paperwhite to a kobo clara 2e. My kid has a last generation paperwhite so I can compare.
What I like: the small format, 6" is better than 7 imo. It's not Amazon. It works with overdrive (at least in Canada) so I can borrow books from library.
What I don't like: it doesn't have a "send to kindle by email" equivalent, that I was heavily relying on. Books sent by usb don't sync between devices, and have some quirks (they seem to work slower, you can't highlight across pages). Calibre web could give you that but in practice it is too buggy to be a sustainable option. It's overall not as polished as a kindle
Overall I'm ok with the move, it works sufficiently well, and I'm especially glad to reduce the cash I send to Amazon
i almost went that route, i really like the email to kindle and also wanted the oasis features which i think kobo does now. I dont like throwing money at amazon, it needs some competition.
Main benefit of internet access is that you can share progress with Kindle app on your phone. Sometimes you end up with some time to kill and you only have a phone at hand.
I lolled at "impossible to break the DRM." Of course practically, they could make it very difficult, I'm not denying that. However, it's kind of funny to have DRM on something that can be copied with screenshots. If we ever get to the hilariously desperate level of HDCP for ebooks, you could still use a camera pointed at a screen and decent OCR to get something reasonable.
It's even dumber of course, because many people, when faced with the issue that they can no longer get a DRM free copy of something they bought, have a perfectly reasonable alternative that is free and provides DRM free copies of nearly anything. I guess it must be really important to stomp out the casual copying, but I find it hard to believe that people who are just casually copying would bother to do what was necessary already. Seems to me like this is probably something that mostly power users would've done.
I didn't say that was breaking the DRM. I said I think it's silly to have DRM on something that's so easy to copy regardless. That's still true alongside "no DRM is impossible to break"
OCRing individual screenshots is not "easy to copy."
Most people who pirate (books, software, music, whatever) won't bother to go to such extreme lengths. Stuff like this obviously doesn't make piracy impossible, but it does substantially reduce it.
So it will make stripping the DRM for personal use (and, I suppose, sharing with friends) infeasible, while doing little to prevent it from showing up at piracy sites.
Which will be enough to discourage a lot of pirates. Certainly most of the potential pirates who could conceivably be converted to buyers.
Gabe Newell had the right idea when he said that you don't have to make piracy impossible, you just have to make purchasing easier than pirating. The kind of people who will jump through endless hoops, tolerate shoddy rips, etc. just to get something for free were never going to be your customers anyway.
It's all great to quote Gabe Newell but you are completely misunderstanding his point. The point is that the steam platform makes it so easy to buy and play games that pirating them is comparatively risky (chance of malware, lack of updates) and not worth it, not that he has made games difficult enough to pirate that his platform seems favorable. Games on steam have no default DRM like ebooks on the amazon store, for the kinds of games I play, most of them can be copied from steam and played without the interference of DRM. For a lot of the ones which do have some kind of DRM or steam reliance, it is actually trivial to use a fake steam library to bypass this form of "DRM". All in all, the amount of actual DRM on steam is limited only to AAA titles.
I pirate e-books not because I can't afford to buy them, but because I can't find a DRM free copy so I just buy the hard copy and pirate a digital version. The reality is, if there were more e-book stores which were like steam, I would probably use them, because hopefully I would have access to the content I bought to display it on any device I want and archive it for the future.
I mean, you can archieve that with a smartphone and open source OCR software. If you just care about reading and not searching, you can even leave out the OCR step and just store the photos.
The pirated copies usually come from people who defeated DRM and made it available to the public. If DRM is harder to break, it means less availability via alternate means.
True, but they'll take the path of less resistance. If breaking the DRM is not strictly necessary for copying, then as soon as breaking the DRM becomes more difficult than automating screenshots and OCR, I'd expect that to start happening.
The truth is though, I personally doubt ebook DRM is terribly impressive. Maybe I'm just wrong, but it seems like the reality is that people who break the DRM just don't bother publishing their tools anymore because the cat and mouse game isn't worth the trouble.
Every kind of non-interactive DRM media is trivial to break. What's the point of not allowing me to read a book I bought in any device when I will always be able to pirate it? Is there a point other than making software worse to show content creators that something be being done to combat piracy?
I don't know if they are the best alternative, but I have been using Kobo for over a decade. In that time, they have not shown any intererest in locking down their devices. That is not to say they are easy to modify, but they do not use encryption (or any other mechanism) to lock people out of their devices[1]. Anyone with a knowledge on unix and an update file can figure out how to modify the software. The community has also been making binary patches to Kobo's proprietary components for about a decade, and they don't seem to be interested in preventing that either. Some models even have replacable internal uSD cards, should you want to increase the storage.
The last Kobo I bought has never been online and runs open source reader software (KOReader) which is much more powerful than any commercial alternative I have seen.
There are other options out there that likely have similar qualities. I simply have not used them. I simply wanted to point out that there are much more open platforms out there.
[1] I am talking about device level access here. Kobo does use DRM for purchased books and books borrowed through libraries.
I think its important to clarify a few things.
The article is noting that they blocked the downloading of books that use "Kindle Unlimited" which is a subscription, that runs $10 a month, for unlimited of select Kindle titles. Think of Kindle Unlimited as the book equivalent to Spotify Premium.
You can still download and un-DRM books that you buy individually from Amazon directly. This is an important distinction. Because you "own" the book you buy directly. You don't own titles through Kindle Unlimited, you are borrowing them.
The restriction from allowing the downloaded books on this service actually makes a lot more sense when you understand the service. This is no different than we see from any other service where you pay a monthly fee for access to content while maintaining an active subscription. For example you can download songs with Spotify, but they automatically expire after 30 days unless they "phone home" to confirm you still have a subscription. Netflix, HBO, Hulu, etc all let you download movies now, but they expire unless you maintain a subscription.
You don't own any of this content, it is just lent to you for the duration of an active subscription. Kindle Unlimited is no different, but for books.
The important part is that nothing has changed for books purchased directly from Amazon individually. This change is only for the Kindle Unlimited service.
Don't they offer older DRM schemes for older devices? Surely you do not have to update your kindle (especially if it is older) to read newly published books?
Yes, and you can for now still get AZW3 files (that can be unDRMed) through Download for USB transfer if you have a registered Kindle even if it's new enough to handle their new KFX format.
What is broken is that you can't use Kindle for PC/Mac to get AZW3 copies of books published on or after Jan. 3rd 2023 as it only lets you download with the latest version. As someone without a Kindle (and I'm certainly not buying one now) any new Kindle books would be locked down.
You can still break the DRM on books with Adobe DRM (like that used by Google Play books) or Kobo (they have their own DRM but also offer Adobe versions).
How's that "not possible to unDRM" thing works? The reader able to decipher the content to show it on screen means that everything it needs to decipher content is inside the reader, and can be extracted.
80% of commercial trade book publishing in the US/UK/EU is dominated by five multinationals, the "Big Five" -- Penguin Random House, Simon and Schuster, Macmillan, Hachette, and HarperCollins.
Corporate policy at all of these companies except Macmillan absolutely requires DRM on digital products, no exceptions permitted. This policy comes from boardroom level and trickles down to contaminate every department. Remember, most of these companies are in turn subsidiaries of organizations with interests in other media: news, TV, film, and so on. DRM infected them decades ago and any attempt to change direction on it would be an admission of policy failure, which is the kiss of death to an executive career.)
Macmillan, the smallest -- and the English language arm of German conglomerate Holtzbrinck -- is privately owned, so not vulnerable to activist shareholders: they listened to their authors and publishers several years back and a number of their imprints publish DRM-free.
Other than that, many small/indie publishers gave up on DRM years ago. But they may not have what you want ...
Baen also sells their books DRM free and have been doing so for like 20+ years! I think they were one of the first to even sell eBooks. Also sci-fi/fantasy geared.
Amazon restricting the use of purchased content the way they please, HBO removing content, just like other providers, I feel it was an essential and wise move a few years back not buying online available content anymore (have some still in my account, who knows how long can access). Same with streaming providers on beloved content, music frequently disappear from my playlists, it is a nuisance. Better managing content myself. It is common sence afterall, how could anyone trust these organizations in 5 yet alone 10, 15 or more years will still give you access the way you had and need. You better manage yourself then. More hustle but much more reliable.
Kindle Unlimited titles aren't "purchased content". It's a all-you-can-eat subscription, and it's understood that your access to those books is contingent on maintaining the subscription.
Amazon also changed their encryption schema yet again, such that any book published in 2023 or newer is using a new format that is as of yet uncrackable by DeDRM/NoDRM.
I've been slowly weening myself from Amazon and buying all books through Kobo (mostly because Amazon often has ebook sales that aren't on sale elsewhere), but 2023 seems like a good time to break completely.
Unfortunately I've still got a bunch of comics though them, and last I checked the old Comixology scraping tools had broken when Amazon nixed the old Comixology web client.
Yes, the OBOK plug-in has decrypted everything I've thrown at it so far, sans books borrowed from overdrive. But I have no interest in defrauding libraries: I just want to make backups of books I legally purchased.
Unfortunately, from what I've heard, for your book to be on Kindle Unlimited it cannot be available elsewhere, so many smaller authors won't be available on other stores. I'm surprised Amazon hasn't gotten scrutiny for it.
As someone in that boat, I'll probably take my books out of KU for exactly that reason and new ones are likely to only end up on KU for at most one 3 month period.
There are people who seem to do quite well with KU, but looking at my own numbers I suspect it looks a lot better than it is when taking into account the restrictions it adds. It absolutely is worth occasionally having things in KU for unknown authors (like me) for discovery, but for me at least I've come to question if it makes financial sense in the long run vs. making things more widely visible.
You can enable adding your Comixology library to your Kindle library (there's some setting on the Amazon site) and then you should be able to get copies and remove DRM like any other Kindle book (well published before 2023...)
The comics/graphic novels that you can download via the Kindle for PC app are at a much lower resolution than what is delivered over the Comixology app, I've noticed. I think the app must detect what your device is and only deliver the super-high-res version if your device's display can support it. But anecdotally, the graphic novels I backed up via the Kindle for PC method were maybe around 250mb in size and tended to be 1155x1650 resolution, while the same graphic novel downloaded via the Comixology app on my tablet might be 1-1.5GB in size.
Amazon also changed the way their Kindle Cloud Reader (the Kindle web app) works so that it now displays an image of text instead of HTML text. This appears to have been done for anti-piracy reasons, but it has the knock-on effect of breaking accessibility browser plugins that people with disabilities rely on to make Kindle books accessible. In case anyone is not aware, image-of-text is considered a newbie mistake from an accessibility perspective, so it's odd for Amazon to take this step backward.
Amazon rolled out this update over a year ago, and my startup still gets emails from people who are upset that they can no longer read books they purchased with the BeeLine Reader plugin, as they expected they would when they bought the books.
There's nothing we can do to get Amazon to fix this, but we are now launching partnerships with other ebook platforms that are more accessibility-friendly.
> There’s nothing we can do to get Amazon to fix this
It might be easier to get publishers to fix this. Not all publishers use DRM on books sold by Amazon (Tor is a notable example). Books not encumbered with DRM can be used by alternative apps.
Interesting point! I'm not sure that Amazon would change their web app's software stack for a subset of their publishers though. My guess is we'd need to find a big publisher and get them to ask Amazon not to use this new image-of-text method. But I assume that any big publisher would be unlikely to not use DRM.
To try to get them to change it back to the way it was, with HTML text?
I'm hesitant to involve lawyers at all, since I don't want to get off on the wrong foot with Amazon. I view them as a potential licensee (we license to one of their smaller competitors already), and I'm sure their attitude toward us would take a turn for the worse if they heard about us via a lawyer/implied legal threat.
For what it's worth, last I checked (Nov 2021) the image was rendered client side. They send a collection of glyphs as SVG strings like
"M31.9824,43.9453 L364.014,-719.971 L495.117,-719.971 L163.086,43.9453 L31.9824,43.9453 Z "
And then each line is a sequence of indices into the glyph array. There isn't a mapping back to letters, that I know of, but one could prepare a table of glyph to character for the fonts they commonly use. That could be used to extract books, but might be a bit complicated/fragile for your use case.
In my experience, Kindle Unlimited is crap anyway and in no way or form "unlimited" like e.g. Amazon Music is. Almost everything covered is extremely low quality. And the very few books that are worth reading and eligible are cheap anyway (because they're likely self-published), so you'd save money just buying a couple of those every month. (And you'd even get to keep them!) I'd be intrigued to hear opposing viewpoints.
OTOH if you see that a book is covered by Kindle Unlimited, that's an indicator that it's probably not that great so that's kind of useful when you're looking for something to read. :)
Is there a source for this that isn’t goodereader? The writing on that site is badly in need of an editor. It consistently gets basic facts about stories wrong.
For example, right in the first sentence is a factual error, as pointed out by many people in this thread:
“Amazon announced it has made some changes with regard to the e-books purchased via the Kindle Unlimited program.“
Books are not “purchased” through the Kindle Unlimited program.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 284 ms ] threadNo maybe here. If they block the export to USB method, then your “owned” content is locked into kindle readers permanently.
The time to backup your library into Calibre is now, before they lock you out of your content. After you’re locked out is too late.
The author went on to suggest a likely next move for amazon was to apply the same restriction for your own books, and that maybe you should create backups in that scenario. This is the section I was quoting.
If you believe the authors suggestion that amazon will take these next steps, as I do, then the suggestion to “maybe” backup your content in that scenario is flawed. Once they lock you out it’s too late — backing it up now is the correct response.
Not that the rest of the industry is a great place at the moment. All major ebook sources are DRMd and locked, and that includes libraries, which have traditionally been associated with public spaces and openness.
I have heard that Kobos are becoming a more viable alternative as a reading device, and that they are a little more open. It works with Calibre and Calibre-Web. I will now be researching a Kobo device for this year, and although I am 'voting with my wallet', I don't think it will make much of a difference being a single drop among millions going the other way.
You still can't load or read epubs directly on Kindles.
To the average reader, does this have an negative impact?
This doesn’t appear to be true. I have several non Amazon epubs that I sent using the web interface, all with covers.
Also works with Calibre (epub, pdf, docx)
Moon+ reader will knock kindle out of the water
Without this subscription, the Kindle still allows standard one-off downloads from the Amazon store (no surprise). But it can also accept epub and mobi file formats coming from anywhere. You can plug the Kindle in with a usb cable and move files over directly like a mass storage device. Alternatively, it offers a free "wireless transfer" service where you email epub, pbf, or mobi files to a randomly generated email address unique to your device. I use the email service frequently to transfer ePub files I get elsewhere and it works flawlessly. You send the email and open the kindle and it generally shows up in your library on the device near-instantly. It's very good.
If you use Calibre to manage your ebooks, it has a "send to Kindle" button, which is just using this email wireless transfer tool under the hood. You input your unique email address into Calibre and then when you click the "Send to Kindle" button that's how it works and it works well.
As mentioned earlier you can also transfer via usb. The newest Kindles also have USB-C which was a welcome addition.
Lastly I use my Kindle with books rented at the library. You just need a library card and a "Libby" account. The integration is a first-party integration, so no surprise it works essentially natively with Kindle. You choose an ebook at your local library and read it on your Kindle. The Kindle will even show you details about when the book is due and you can return it from the Kindle. It's all very good.
I know Kobo is considered more open because its not tied to Amazon. But I am a heavy Kindle user and have never felt weighed down by it being an Amazon device. I read books from a variety of sources. I buy books (computer books usually) from independent creators and I will send ePubs to Kindle, I will read books loaned from the library and I will also sometimes buy books directly from Amazon. The Kobo gives you the same functionality for the first two, but not the ease of purchasing from Amazon. Amazon is the largest book vendor in the world, so like it or not, I find myself still buying from there, so its nice to have that option.
I admit I have never paid for the Kindle Unlimited subscription. Its mostly low-quality novels pumped out by authors who publish 3-12 books a year. It is incredibly popular among Romance Novel readers (the largest genre of published books), but there are also lots of mystery and sci-fi books on there. But these aren't top quality NYTimes Top Selling books, they are low-rate airport novels in my experience.
Buying from Kobo is easy, it can be done on device just like on Kindle and when Google allowed it you could buy books in the Android app. Plus you can use other ePub stores like Google Play without even removing the DRM which is nice.
I currently use a Boox a device but Kobo has the best reader software IMO. Amazon just doesn't have enough font/format customization without jailbreaking and I really shouldn't have to do that to find a comfortable font size.
What I like: the small format, 6" is better than 7 imo. It's not Amazon. It works with overdrive (at least in Canada) so I can borrow books from library.
What I don't like: it doesn't have a "send to kindle by email" equivalent, that I was heavily relying on. Books sent by usb don't sync between devices, and have some quirks (they seem to work slower, you can't highlight across pages). Calibre web could give you that but in practice it is too buggy to be a sustainable option. It's overall not as polished as a kindle
Overall I'm ok with the move, it works sufficiently well, and I'm especially glad to reduce the cash I send to Amazon
It’s a ebook reader. I load files on through calibre and read them. Any update or access to the internet is exceedingly unlikely to be to my benefit.
Zero issues so far.
Most books conveniently provide integers at the bottom of each page, prefixed by "p."
I haven’t used kindle in a few years, but last I checked, “page” numbers were relative to the device you were on (and its screen size).
It is a bummer that you can't look up Wikipedia.
I wonder if this works with newer Kindles?
Then you wouldn't have been using Kindle Unlimited anyway, so you'd be unaffected by this change.
They're not talking about books you 'bought' individually.
It's even dumber of course, because many people, when faced with the issue that they can no longer get a DRM free copy of something they bought, have a perfectly reasonable alternative that is free and provides DRM free copies of nearly anything. I guess it must be really important to stomp out the casual copying, but I find it hard to believe that people who are just casually copying would bother to do what was necessary already. Seems to me like this is probably something that mostly power users would've done.
Most people who pirate (books, software, music, whatever) won't bother to go to such extreme lengths. Stuff like this obviously doesn't make piracy impossible, but it does substantially reduce it.
Gabe Newell had the right idea when he said that you don't have to make piracy impossible, you just have to make purchasing easier than pirating. The kind of people who will jump through endless hoops, tolerate shoddy rips, etc. just to get something for free were never going to be your customers anyway.
I pirate e-books not because I can't afford to buy them, but because I can't find a DRM free copy so I just buy the hard copy and pirate a digital version. The reality is, if there were more e-book stores which were like steam, I would probably use them, because hopefully I would have access to the content I bought to display it on any device I want and archive it for the future.
Sounds more like it would turn people who would remove the DRM of the stuff they bought into people who visit pirate sites.
That sounds pretty easy to me.
The same distribution channels are even still running since before things like Amazon's mobi format (and Calibre) were created.
I don't think this DRM change will substantially reduce piracy. Actions like the takedown of Z-Library's domains probably had a much greater effect.
One person automating downloading of Amazon Unlimited's new releases and OCRing them would be way easier than the old dead tree OCR setups.
The truth is though, I personally doubt ebook DRM is terribly impressive. Maybe I'm just wrong, but it seems like the reality is that people who break the DRM just don't bother publishing their tools anymore because the cat and mouse game isn't worth the trouble.
Every kind of non-interactive DRM media is trivial to break. What's the point of not allowing me to read a book I bought in any device when I will always be able to pirate it? Is there a point other than making software worse to show content creators that something be being done to combat piracy?
You will be able to pirate it. Your mom, dad, their friends etc. probably not.
The last Kobo I bought has never been online and runs open source reader software (KOReader) which is much more powerful than any commercial alternative I have seen.
There are other options out there that likely have similar qualities. I simply have not used them. I simply wanted to point out that there are much more open platforms out there.
[1] I am talking about device level access here. Kobo does use DRM for purchased books and books borrowed through libraries.
Does this mean I'll no longer be able to use an Amazon Kindle reader service with their own kindle e-reader?
This is pretty messed up.
You can still download and un-DRM books that you buy individually from Amazon directly. This is an important distinction. Because you "own" the book you buy directly. You don't own titles through Kindle Unlimited, you are borrowing them.
The restriction from allowing the downloaded books on this service actually makes a lot more sense when you understand the service. This is no different than we see from any other service where you pay a monthly fee for access to content while maintaining an active subscription. For example you can download songs with Spotify, but they automatically expire after 30 days unless they "phone home" to confirm you still have a subscription. Netflix, HBO, Hulu, etc all let you download movies now, but they expire unless you maintain a subscription.
You don't own any of this content, it is just lent to you for the duration of an active subscription. Kindle Unlimited is no different, but for books.
The important part is that nothing has changed for books purchased directly from Amazon individually. This change is only for the Kindle Unlimited service.
What is broken is that you can't use Kindle for PC/Mac to get AZW3 copies of books published on or after Jan. 3rd 2023 as it only lets you download with the latest version. As someone without a Kindle (and I'm certainly not buying one now) any new Kindle books would be locked down.
The only reason I chose Kindle over competitors was so that I could crack, and therefore own, the books I bought.
I guess I'll libgen it up now, and order deadtree from non-Amazon stores to support the authors.
Could someone please explain to me the concept of "borrowing" for digital books which can be infinitely copied?
I recently chose a PocketBook InkPad Lite, and started buying DRM-free O'Reilly books through Ebooks.com: https://www.neilvandyke.org/ebooks/
But the vast majority of traditionally published books are not available (legally) DRM-free.
(Voting with a prybar is not the same.)
80% of commercial trade book publishing in the US/UK/EU is dominated by five multinationals, the "Big Five" -- Penguin Random House, Simon and Schuster, Macmillan, Hachette, and HarperCollins.
Corporate policy at all of these companies except Macmillan absolutely requires DRM on digital products, no exceptions permitted. This policy comes from boardroom level and trickles down to contaminate every department. Remember, most of these companies are in turn subsidiaries of organizations with interests in other media: news, TV, film, and so on. DRM infected them decades ago and any attempt to change direction on it would be an admission of policy failure, which is the kiss of death to an executive career.)
Macmillan, the smallest -- and the English language arm of German conglomerate Holtzbrinck -- is privately owned, so not vulnerable to activist shareholders: they listened to their authors and publishers several years back and a number of their imprints publish DRM-free.
Other than that, many small/indie publishers gave up on DRM years ago. But they may not have what you want ...
Distributes a lot of small press sf/fantasy books and magazines, all drm free.
I've been slowly weening myself from Amazon and buying all books through Kobo (mostly because Amazon often has ebook sales that aren't on sale elsewhere), but 2023 seems like a good time to break completely.
Unfortunately I've still got a bunch of comics though them, and last I checked the old Comixology scraping tools had broken when Amazon nixed the old Comixology web client.
As someone in that boat, I'll probably take my books out of KU for exactly that reason and new ones are likely to only end up on KU for at most one 3 month period.
There are people who seem to do quite well with KU, but looking at my own numbers I suspect it looks a lot better than it is when taking into account the restrictions it adds. It absolutely is worth occasionally having things in KU for unknown authors (like me) for discovery, but for me at least I've come to question if it makes financial sense in the long run vs. making things more widely visible.
Amazon rolled out this update over a year ago, and my startup still gets emails from people who are upset that they can no longer read books they purchased with the BeeLine Reader plugin, as they expected they would when they bought the books.
There's nothing we can do to get Amazon to fix this, but we are now launching partnerships with other ebook platforms that are more accessibility-friendly.
It might be easier to get publishers to fix this. Not all publishers use DRM on books sold by Amazon (Tor is a notable example). Books not encumbered with DRM can be used by alternative apps.
Is there some way of finding that out in advance of buying the book? (Other than individually asking each publisher/author?)
I'm hesitant to involve lawyers at all, since I don't want to get off on the wrong foot with Amazon. I view them as a potential licensee (we license to one of their smaller competitors already), and I'm sure their attitude toward us would take a turn for the worse if they heard about us via a lawyer/implied legal threat.
Or perhaps I'm misunderstanding the suggestion?
OTOH if you see that a book is covered by Kindle Unlimited, that's an indicator that it's probably not that great so that's kind of useful when you're looking for something to read. :)
Is there a source for this that isn’t goodereader? The writing on that site is badly in need of an editor. It consistently gets basic facts about stories wrong.
For example, right in the first sentence is a factual error, as pointed out by many people in this thread:
“Amazon announced it has made some changes with regard to the e-books purchased via the Kindle Unlimited program.“
Books are not “purchased” through the Kindle Unlimited program.