that it will become possible to view Kindle Scribe notebooks in this new application as it is to view them in the Kindle App on Android (when it doesn't crash).
They're likely doing this because it's likely the only remaining loophole to their new DRM scheme. Too bad for them it's caused me to buy all my ebooks elsewhere.
If the book is readable, it can be pirated. Even the most labor-intensive piracy technique is not that difficult. And once a drm-free book is out there, it's out there.
Though sadly the new types of Kinds require a method of extracting Kindles to PDF which is an order of magnitude harder than the old Calibre DeDRM method. I had to boot Bluestacks and export license files and rub my tummy and pat my head and do the Hokey Pokey… but in the end, the books are now 100% mine.
Edit: It’s been a while. Looks like the process is more streamlined, but still not what it used to be.
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.
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 be able to purchase, borrow, or download additional books on them after that date.
If you deregister or factory reset these devices, you will not be able to re-register or use these devices in any way.
Affected devices include Kindle 1st and 2nd Generation, Kindle DX and DX Graphite, Kindle Keyboard, Kindle 4, Kindle Touch, Kindle 5, and Kindle Paperwhite 1st Generation.
To minimize any disruption, we're offering a promotional code for 20% off select new Kindle devices B4PT5XAJ74 as well as a $20 eBook credit that will be automatically added to your account after purchasing a new device (valid through June 20th, 2026, 11:59pm PST - Terms and Conditions apply). Our newer Kindle devices bring meaningful improvements in screen quality, performance and accessibility — and you'll have access to your complete Kindle library and the Kindle Store. You can also continue to read all your books on our free Kindle apps (Android, iOS, Mac, and PC) and Kindle for Web.
My jailbroken Kindle has been sitting in a drawer for a while, but I do go into phases where I am using it heavily for months at a time. But, what I'm really getting at is, I don't find myself having to undertake the procedure to root a Kindle on a regular basis.
Could someone clarify for me -- if I nab another secondhand device from eBay after May 20, will I be able to jailbreak it?
Generally speaking, they auto update, and the latest firmware is always patched to not be jailbreakable. However airplane mode easily dodges the auto update process, and new vulnerabilities are found to enable jailbreaking eventually.
When I bought mine, it was updated to the latest firmware. I wanted to jailbreak mine, the method was “there isn’t one yet” so I set it in airplane mode. For a bit I manually copied all books over usb to the kindle, or disabled airplane mode to read new books if there wasn’t a new firmware version out yet anyway. A few months later, there was a jailbreak method. Now ive jailbroken. I can even connect it to the internet, and auto updates are prevented.
If the kindle is old enough it doesn’t recieve updates anyway though, then it should be very easy.
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!
Access to your library continues to be available with free apps on phone, or Windows, or a newer Kindle as well as any browser, so the loss of support of 14 year old mobile devices doesn’t seem like huge news. There can’t be too many still in use even.
I replaced the battery on my kindle 4 not that long ago. It had the best UX for extended reading when compared to newer kindles.
The biggest downside was not having a frontlit display.
I recently switch to an xteink x4, and found that several others in that community migrated from kindle 4s as well. So there are still some number of users in the world that value the device.
Yeah this is my question. My Kindle has been in airplane mode since the day I bought it.
As long as I can still keep loading books on it over USB, and it's just their DRM ecosystem that will stop working, that's fine with me.
But if they are aggressively bricking the units, if I accidentally turn on wifi by accident and it just completely stops working, I will be extremely pissed.
they are not bricking the units. just kindle store won't be available anymore, and the azw/epub version which is supported on your kindles won't be provided anymore by amazon anywhere.
what is on the kindle will stay and keep working.
if you reset the kindle, DRMed content won't work anymore.
> To minimize any disruption, we're offering a promotional code for 20% off select new Kindle devices B4PT5XAJ74 as well as a $20 eBook credit that will be automatically added to your account after purchasing a new device (valid through June 20th, 2026, 11:59pm PST - Terms and Conditions apply).
That does minimize the disruption for me. In fact I will never buy a new kindle nor buy an ebook from amazon ever again.
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 year old CPU doing when trying to support modern features and eBooks that now have metadata that did not exist at the time, such as fancier typesetting and color?
3. As for the Windows app, it's terrible. Horrible. Awful. Nobody liked it. Nobody uses it. It will not be missed.
> 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.
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.
Both my Kindle Touch and my Kindle Paperwhite gen1 are still completely fine. And I havent noticed any typesetting etc that doesnt work.
All of these discontinued devices support the AWZ4-format (which can be de-drmed and what im guessing this whole thing is about), but the newer ones use KFX which locks you perfectly into the Amazon and Kindle-ecosystem
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 while I could.
I'm pleased with OBOOK5. It runs Obook OS which is a Linux OS. Never nagged me to connect to WiFi or anything, I simply plugged a cable to transfer my local stuff.
Same here, I quite enjoy it. Plus there is open source software available, such as crosspoint. It’s easy to flash and an opus call away to change the behavior if you want something to work differently.
I'd suggest cheap Android-based Chinese e-Ink e-readers if you want flexibility. My current one is a Bigme B6, which was for sale in my country a few months ago.
Their main advantage is providing access to all e-reading apps available on the Google Play Store, including Amazon's own Kindle app, as well as sideloaded ones such as KOReader.
On the downside, the battery life on those isn't as good as that of dedicated Kindles, Kobos, or other lightweight e-readers, but they still hold a charge for four or five days if one turns off their antennas, which is plenty of time to recharge them.
As for the ebooks themselves, I switched to purchasing from Kobo and other ebook stores. Some sell DRM-less ePubs, which is nice, while those that come with DRM can be easily liberated. And for the occasional Kindle-exclusive that is struck with (temporarily) unbreakable DRM, the Kindle app, although annoying, works well enough.
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.)
Well, I happen to use it everyday. I honestly don't know what exactly is "terrible/horrible/awful" about it. I'm neutral about its UX - neither memorable nor despicable.
It may be missed if the new app's UX turns out to be worse on whatever metrics you're using.
an ePub book is basically a zipped HTML folder with static pictures and text. A 18 year old kindle can still render it easily. I expect Amazon are adding a lot more DRM and hoops than required. I also noticed if you havent read a book you downloaded for a while it wont let you read it again without re-connecting. Just glad I pulled everything onto my PC and Kobo a few years back. Agree the PC interface is pretty crappy though.
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.
This applies to newspapers too — if you compare the print version to the online version of a newspaper you notice that there's a lot more attention paid to the paper version. Whereas the online version has all kinds of aggressive banners and ads.
I think it's a generational thing, for a lot of publishers the internet is this newfangled thing
It's all from external pressure. Amazon spending energy on ebook DRM is a negative ROI activity for them.
A vanishingly small % of would-be ebook buyers even know pirated ones exist, and an even smaller one knows how to get those onto their Kindle.
My wife buys dozens of ebooks per year on Amazon, her friends too. I'm guessing if I poll that group, none of them would even know where to start, nor care to.
"Piracy is almost always a service problem" is also true. I see a lot of people who were risen on a pirated .mp3 and .epub to move to the streaming platforms just because it's a bit more convenient.
What OCR do you guys use? I have only seen OCR that makes a lot of errors. Having it be usable requires tons of manual review. I probably wouldn't trust an LLM to do that review because it may introduce its own errors.
Edit: downvoters, would you like to answer my question? I would genuinely like to know. I thought based on the confidence of the comment above there must be a super accurate OCR I've never heard of, but after seeing the sibling comment I'm going to guess there isn't.
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 readable.
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.
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.
Might depend on what you like to read. I haven't hit this a lot. There was one title my daughter wanted which was Kindle exclusive in the US but I was able to get as an Adobe epub from a European seller.
There's self published books and stories on other platforms. There's a bunch that are free too. There's some author's that only use Kindle, but there's plenty of independent stuff out there not Amazon.
I also make my ePubs a free download off my website which prevents me as an author enrolling in this. So just about anything on Kindle Unlimited is only for their ecosystem.
Thank you for this. I can understand why many authors don't want to do this (running a store, etc) but I wish they all did. I'll take a gander; I could use some more sci-fi!
Honestly, I think the Kindle Unlimited (KU) program should be persecuted as an illegal monopoly. A lot of authors actually don't actually like it, but they have to do it because it is the only way to have viable income. This tends to happen with more niche genres though. As an example almost all books in the harem-lit (1 guy and a bunch of lovers) genre are tied to Kindle unlimited. Meanwhile, this creates a self-fulfilling prophecy as pushing more readers to KU and thus making alternative methods of selling even more difficult. Though since KU forces exclusivity on only being sold through Amazon, the authors are forced to switch to it.
I could probably go on a similar rant with Audible too, but that is different story. In short, Amazon has way too much influence over the entire publishing industry.
For me it's the other way round - I used to buy from them when I could dedrm, and ensure that they can never pull this kind of bait and switch on me. Every ebook I've bought can be read on any device I own. I will not accept any other level of service.
Probably it will have a very measurable effect. By every day it gets a bit harder to discover such services - if you know, you know. If you have to ask, you have already lost.
Also, AI chatbots outright refuse to give any answer that is remote related to piracy (or any adjacent topics). Since they take over the role of search engines, that's also a big factor IMO.
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.
When they stopped allowing downloads last year I liberated all my books (there was a month before it actually closed down) and stopped buying from Amazon. I'm done.
I now buy from authors directly or I go to my friend Anna. Too bad because the prices were reasonable.
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 locking us in mustache twirling reasons, I have better ways to spend my income. Yes I am not above reading shadow copies of books at times, but I'd rather kindle sell all titles as DRM free on rootable devices and their convenient storefront would be enough for me to direct my business there more.
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 got 2,500 books on my Kindle devices, and I can access them anywhere in the world at any time on my dedicated readers, my phone, my laptop (via Kindle Cloud Reader).
If DRM is the price I have to pay for a dead-simple ecosystem, multi-device support and free cloud storage, well, I guess I'm happy to pay it.
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.
I mean really? Oh I can't see someone heading down to the copy shop to scan every page of war and peace and then print it out when you can get a used one for less than the paper cost..
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.
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.
I’m so happy I downloaded all my Kindle books when I still had a chance and then moved to the Kobo ecosystem, which albeit not perfect is much much better
I was kinda amazed to find out how hard it was to buy a kobo libra colour in .de -- apparently there's some kind of cartel thing going on where amazon somehow convince entire markets not to sell their competitors products. I had to order it from Hungary or something iirc.
No issues here. I liberated my kindle library and put it in Google Drive. The Kobo can download books from there out of the box. The Kobo store works fine too, although a lot of books barely have any reviews if you’re into that. I have the Kobo Libra Colour and it’s by far the best reader I’ve ever owned.
It's funny that the top product recommendation on the website is the "Kobo Remote Control", which is the main thing that is making me think of going to Kobo once my Kindle Paperwhite is dead.
Amazon abandoning +14yo products, I don't care. I'm surprised they kept them alive that long. And they'll still work, just not with the store.
The DRM/Kindle for PC thing, I don't care. I'm perfectly aware that "buying" a digital good is actually a temporary license. I'm paying for the convenience, not to own "something". And since I've paid my fair share of "copie privée" tax, if I want to grab a persistent copy of an ebook I purchased on Amazon, I got it from the high seas.
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.
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.
I guess it depends by your definition of "worse", the process of buying books and destroying them was considered "transformative" enough to be considered legal, while Anthropic later did piracy and kind of legally undermined the whole book scanning operation.
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.
Too true, and with 1000's of new books added daily, new authors are lost in the noise. Writing is a lifestyle choice and a hobby, you will need to be very lucky, have a strong following or be pushed by a big publishing house to make any money from it, even successful indie authors will earn in a year what a good programmer earns in a day.
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 replacing more and more of my physical books with pdf/epub copies. It's been hard because there is nothing I love more than sitting down with a physical book. But this is definitely far more convenient.
I now want to start building up a research paper library in the same system.
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.
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.
I have my Kindle permanently in airplane mode to keep it away from Amazon's shenanigans and use Calibre to upload books to it, but if/when it breaks I have a feeling my next e-reader will be a Rakuten Kobo.
A number of comments are along the lines of "people will just pirate books from Library Genesis / Anna's Archive". It seems obvious the motivation is cutting off the supply of new books to those sites.
Glad to have gotten off Kindle and onto Kobo years ago. Enshittification continues on. Now, we just have to wait for the publishers to put the screws to Rakuten...
elicash | 8 hours ago
WillAdams | 8 hours ago
I'm hoping that with the discontinuation of:
https://read.amazon.com/kindle-notebook
that it will become possible to view Kindle Scribe notebooks in this new application as it is to view them in the Kindle App on Android (when it doesn't crash).
ravenstine | 8 hours ago
beej71 | 8 hours ago
cbdevidal | 8 hours ago
Edit: It’s been a while. Looks like the process is more streamlined, but still not what it used to be.
AdmiralAsshat | 8 hours ago
echelon | 8 hours ago
Wait, what? What's the scope, and when does it happen?
sgiratch | 8 hours ago
"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 be able to purchase, borrow, or download additional books on them after that date. If you deregister or factory reset these devices, you will not be able to re-register or use these devices in any way.
Affected devices include Kindle 1st and 2nd Generation, Kindle DX and DX Graphite, Kindle Keyboard, Kindle 4, Kindle Touch, Kindle 5, and Kindle Paperwhite 1st Generation.
To minimize any disruption, we're offering a promotional code for 20% off select new Kindle devices B4PT5XAJ74 as well as a $20 eBook credit that will be automatically added to your account after purchasing a new device (valid through June 20th, 2026, 11:59pm PST - Terms and Conditions apply). Our newer Kindle devices bring meaningful improvements in screen quality, performance and accessibility — and you'll have access to your complete Kindle library and the Kindle Store. You can also continue to read all your books on our free Kindle apps (Android, iOS, Mac, and PC) and Kindle for Web.
If you have any questions or require assistance, please visit https://www.amazon.com/help/kindle/devicedeprecation.
Sincerely, The Kindle Team"
boneitis | 8 hours ago
My jailbroken Kindle has been sitting in a drawer for a while, but I do go into phases where I am using it heavily for months at a time. But, what I'm really getting at is, I don't find myself having to undertake the procedure to root a Kindle on a regular basis.
Could someone clarify for me -- if I nab another secondhand device from eBay after May 20, will I be able to jailbreak it?
snailmailman | 6 hours ago
When I bought mine, it was updated to the latest firmware. I wanted to jailbreak mine, the method was “there isn’t one yet” so I set it in airplane mode. For a bit I manually copied all books over usb to the kindle, or disabled airplane mode to read new books if there wasn’t a new firmware version out yet anyway. A few months later, there was a jailbreak method. Now ive jailbroken. I can even connect it to the internet, and auto updates are prevented.
If the kindle is old enough it doesn’t recieve updates anyway though, then it should be very easy.
https://kindlemodding.org/kindle-models.html
bee_rider | 7 hours ago
NetMageSCW | 7 hours ago
mh- | 6 hours ago
aaronscott | 6 hours ago
The biggest downside was not having a frontlit display.
I recently switch to an xteink x4, and found that several others in that community migrated from kindle 4s as well. So there are still some number of users in the world that value the device.
mh- | 6 hours ago
I'm actually surprised that Amazon didn't offer to do a buyback of them.
bee_rider | 6 hours ago
chatmasta | 7 hours ago
Will I be able to load books via USB? Or there is some new DRM the kindle won’t be able to decrypt?
sbarre | 7 hours ago
As long as I can still keep loading books on it over USB, and it's just their DRM ecosystem that will stop working, that's fine with me.
But if they are aggressively bricking the units, if I accidentally turn on wifi by accident and it just completely stops working, I will be extremely pissed.
fn-mote | 7 hours ago
DaSHacka | 6 hours ago
alanfranz | 38 minutes ago
what is on the kindle will stay and keep working.
if you reset the kindle, DRMed content won't work anymore.
chocochunks | 6 hours ago
exe34 | 7 hours ago
That does minimize the disruption for me. In fact I will never buy a new kindle nor buy an ebook from amazon ever again.
gjsman-1000 | 8 hours ago
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 year old CPU doing when trying to support modern features and eBooks that now have metadata that did not exist at the time, such as fancier typesetting and color?
3. As for the Windows app, it's terrible. Horrible. Awful. Nobody liked it. Nobody uses it. It will not be missed.
Washuu | 8 hours ago
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. https://blog.pixelmelt.dev/kindle-web-drm/
AdmiralAsshat | 8 hours ago
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.
Washuu | 7 hours ago
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.
datatrashfire | 8 hours ago
sgiratch | 8 hours ago
All of these discontinued devices support the AWZ4-format (which can be de-drmed and what im guessing this whole thing is about), but the newer ones use KFX which locks you perfectly into the Amazon and Kindle-ecosystem
snailmailman | 6 hours ago
lopis | 8 hours ago
n8henrie | 8 hours ago
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 while I could.
abnercoimbre | 8 hours ago
Also hearing good things about XTEINK X4.
cbdevidal | 8 hours ago
sbarre | 7 hours ago
aaronscott | 6 hours ago
alexgieg | 7 hours ago
Their main advantage is providing access to all e-reading apps available on the Google Play Store, including Amazon's own Kindle app, as well as sideloaded ones such as KOReader.
On the downside, the battery life on those isn't as good as that of dedicated Kindles, Kobos, or other lightweight e-readers, but they still hold a charge for four or five days if one turns off their antennas, which is plenty of time to recharge them.
As for the ebooks themselves, I switched to purchasing from Kobo and other ebook stores. Some sell DRM-less ePubs, which is nice, while those that come with DRM can be easily liberated. And for the occasional Kindle-exclusive that is struck with (temporarily) unbreakable DRM, the Kindle app, although annoying, works well enough.
lostlogin | 6 hours ago
I do miss physical buttons a little, but that’s minor gripe.
elabajaba | 5 hours ago
lostlogin | 4 hours ago
I struggled with reviews when buying as I do love having a local library and the ease/difficulty of setting this up is never in device reviews.
unethical_ban | 8 hours ago
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?
tlavoie | 7 hours ago
Larrikin | 7 hours ago
lovelearning | 7 hours ago
Well, I happen to use it everyday. I honestly don't know what exactly is "terrible/horrible/awful" about it. I'm neutral about its UX - neither memorable nor despicable. It may be missed if the new app's UX turns out to be worse on whatever metrics you're using.
boznz | 5 hours ago
UltraSane | 7 hours ago
jm4 | 7 hours ago
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.
sbarre | 7 hours ago
It feels like the last major media industry that is holding out against a "future" that has been here for a long time already.
atherton94027 | 7 hours ago
I think it's a generational thing, for a lot of publishers the internet is this newfangled thing
mh- | 7 hours ago
A vanishingly small % of would-be ebook buyers even know pirated ones exist, and an even smaller one knows how to get those onto their Kindle.
My wife buys dozens of ebooks per year on Amazon, her friends too. I'm guessing if I poll that group, none of them would even know where to start, nor care to.
justsomehnguy | 5 hours ago
UltraSane | 6 hours ago
carlosjobim | 5 hours ago
asveikau | 7 hours ago
Edit: downvoters, would you like to answer my question? I would genuinely like to know. I thought based on the confidence of the comment above there must be a super accurate OCR I've never heard of, but after seeing the sibling comment I'm going to guess there isn't.
UltraSane | 2 hours ago
asveikau | 21 minutes ago
estimator7292 | 7 hours ago
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 readable.
UltraSane | 5 hours ago
see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhJ9zqY8Da0
wolvoleo | an hour ago
asveikau | 7 hours ago
fooqux | 7 hours ago
asveikau | 6 hours ago
chocochunks | 6 hours ago
therealdrag0 | 6 hours ago
boznz | 5 hours ago
fooqux | 5 hours ago
Unlocked5170 | 5 hours ago
I could probably go on a similar rant with Audible too, but that is different story. In short, Amazon has way too much influence over the entire publishing industry.
exe34 | 7 hours ago
tim333 | 7 hours ago
not_your_vase | 6 hours ago
Also, AI chatbots outright refuse to give any answer that is remote related to piracy (or any adjacent topics). Since they take over the role of search engines, that's also a big factor IMO.
Boss0565 | 5 hours ago
shakna | 51 minutes ago
So I'd assume libgen and Anna's Archive will continue on, operating just as normal.
snailmailman | 6 hours ago
The more locked down kindle mobile apps and kindle e-readers make it more difficult, but stripping the drm will always be possible.
wolvoleo | an hour ago
I now buy from authors directly or I go to my friend Anna. Too bad because the prices were reasonable.
Multicomp | 8 hours ago
But with the state of digital goods disrepect for the customer and locking us in mustache twirling reasons, I have better ways to spend my income. Yes I am not above reading shadow copies of books at times, but I'd rather kindle sell all titles as DRM free on rootable devices and their convenient storefront would be enough for me to direct my business there more.
Zanni | 8 hours ago
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 got 2,500 books on my Kindle devices, and I can access them anywhere in the world at any time on my dedicated readers, my phone, my laptop (via Kindle Cloud Reader).
If DRM is the price I have to pay for a dead-simple ecosystem, multi-device support and free cloud storage, well, I guess I'm happy to pay it.
beej71 | 8 hours ago
That makes one of us. To each their own, I guess.
chocochunks | 8 hours ago
stryan | 7 hours ago
cyberpunk | 7 hours ago
aeonik | 5 hours ago
beej71 | 8 hours ago
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.
EA-3167 | 7 hours ago
abawany | 5 hours ago
j45 | 8 hours ago
wrxd | 8 hours ago
cyberpunk | 7 hours ago
MrGreenTea | 5 hours ago
vlod | 7 hours ago
lostlogin | 6 hours ago
Setting up syncing with a home library is a bit messy first time, but very doable.
The only other e-reader I’ve owned is a Kindle Paperwhite and it’s similar.
jm4 | 5 hours ago
kimos | an hour ago
wiether | 8 hours ago
Amazon abandoning +14yo products, I don't care. I'm surprised they kept them alive that long. And they'll still work, just not with the store.
The DRM/Kindle for PC thing, I don't care. I'm perfectly aware that "buying" a digital good is actually a temporary license. I'm paying for the convenience, not to own "something". And since I've paid my fair share of "copie privée" tax, if I want to grab a persistent copy of an ebook I purchased on Amazon, I got it from the high seas.
lores | 8 hours ago
lostlogin | 6 hours ago
The first rule of fight club is that you don’t talk about fight club. Though don’t have to deny its existence.
shrubble | 8 hours ago
cbdevidal | 8 hours ago
hoppyhoppy2 | 8 hours ago
mainmailman | 8 hours ago
RamVasuthevan | 8 hours ago
embedding-shape | 8 hours ago
It's so much worse, they've literally destroyed real physical books in the hopes of that helping them "workaround" copyright, which we "regular" citizens need to comply with: https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/06/anthropic-destroyed-milli...
I guess it depends by your definition of "worse", the process of buying books and destroying them was considered "transformative" enough to be considered legal, while Anthropic later did piracy and kind of legally undermined the whole book scanning operation.
chromacity | 7 hours ago
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.
ziml77 | 7 hours ago
boznz | 5 hours ago
nightski | 8 hours ago
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 replacing more and more of my physical books with pdf/epub copies. It's been hard because there is nothing I love more than sitting down with a physical book. But this is definitely far more convenient.
I now want to start building up a research paper library in the same system.
dml2135 | 8 hours ago
I use Calibre + Calibre Web. Definitely a bit old and clunky, but reliable.
lostlogin | 6 hours ago
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.
ak217 | 7 hours ago
arikrahman | 7 hours ago
gos9 | 6 hours ago
rgovostes | 6 hours ago
themadturk | 4 hours ago
Bridged7756 | 4 hours ago
Even newer Kindles can be jail broken, provided they're on the right version.
outlore | 3 hours ago