This is not an anti-Kindle rant. I have purchased (rented?) several Kindle titles myself.
However, YSK that you are only licensing access to the book from Amazon, you don’t own it like a physical book.
There have been cases where Amazon deletes a title from all devices. (Ironically, one version of “1984” was one such title).
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html
There have also been cases where a customer violated Amazon’s terms of service and lost access to all of their Kindle e-books. Amazon has all the power in this relationship. They can and do change the rules on us lowly peasants from time to time.
Here are the terms of use:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201014950
Note, there are indeed ways to download your books and import them into something like Calibre (and remove the DRM from the books). If you do some web searches (and/or search YouTube) you can probably figure it out.
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So Kobo is the way to go then?
I’m really asking, my daughter is becoming a big book worm and we have missed out on some great sales because she only reads physical books ATM. I want her to give it a try with an e-ready and did not like Amazon for it.
I use Pocketbook. It opens just about anything - epub, mobi, pdf, pdb, and many more formats. Just get a book anywhere and copy it via USB. Or send it as an email attachment to your special address and it will download automatically. You can even replace the reading app with another relatively easily, if you want.
There are Android ereaders. They’re mostly Chinese manufacturers, and I’ve heard more than one doesn’t follow the GPL properly with their modifications to Android, but the end result is freedom to use a variety of sources of books (including Libby and Hoopla from the library, among others).
I haven’t played with parental controls to know if they’re easy to access, but my most current Boox came with the play store installed and it’s pretty easy to learn how to adjust the display settings for different apps with different types of content.
Kobo has direct access to your public library too through Overdrive. Makes borrowing ebooks super easy!
My Kindle never saw any WiFi connected to it. Everything goes through Calibre. I only read dead authors, so I don’t feel bad about pirating my books.
Sometimes I go buy used books at my local bookshops just because you should support your local bookshop.deleted by creator
No but you can jailbreak them, and their OS is linux-based; unfortunately if it’s a new Kindle or newish with an up to date firmware, you might have to wait for someone to release a new jb method. With a jb you can install Koreader (which alone can do everything useful), but also people (mobileread forums) have compiled a working Python library and a terminal with bash…mostly useful to show off :) you can run neofetch
If you’re like me and need Koreader (has impeccable pdf reflow and stardict support), a Kobo is way easier, and you don’t have to wait
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It’s a powerful program but not a complete OS replacement
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I’ve been using KOReader on my phone now, ever since my Kindle one day decided to be unrecognisable on my computer. Couldn’t find a solution to fix it so it became a glorified paperweight.
The screen real estate is slightly degraded, but fuck if I give Amazon any more of my money. Besides, I get to store epubs as epubs instead of converting to that god awful mobi format.
Way to go, modern phone screens are not too bad…I think a big reason I enjoy dumb ereaders is the lack of multitasking lol
Your kindle probably has a busted micro usb port (the cables too can stop working for data transfer), no idea if it’s too difficult to solder a new one… I would try cleaning it up really well first
There have also been cases where a customer violated Amazon’s terms of service and lost access to all of their Kindle e-books
Imagine where corpo can take your property because you did something they did not like…
Now open your eyes, peasants.
Imagine where corpo can take your property
Brave to assume that just because you paid money for something you own it.
The lesson is don’t get in bed with corpos who hold custody of your property…
Custody is 9/10th of the property law anyway ;)
This is why I only read books from the library
🏴☠️
I’m an author of two books, and whenever someone asks me for a copy (or even says they want to read it), I straight-up hand them a free ebook. I just want people to read me.
My wife wrote a book and brought copies to sell. Someone asked her if she brought ones to sell and my wife said yes. Later when we meet with her she’s like “you’re sure I can have this?” My wife says something like “yeah I brought enough” and then she never paid lol. Even worse, the next day she wasn’t randomly holding a $20 bill and put it away. Either she’s the most rude and insanely conniving person ever or our life was a sitcom because wtf. There’s more context but I don’t wanna yap too long. My wife almost even took the money out of her hand thinking she just didn’t have cash the night before.
All that said, you deserve to get paid for your work!
As someone who publishes on Amazon if you buy my book and Amazon takes it from you PM I will send said customer a epub version for free.
Ugh. I was looking for a Book and found it on Barnes and Noble. according to the blurb I was supposed to be able to download it after purchase. But after purchasing it I quickly found out that you can only download it if you have the Nook app. Which isn’t available in Canada. Where I’m from.
I was able to find the .apk and install it on my phone but the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth.
Yaar, matey.
I hate that pirating is the ONLY way to even semi own what you buy. Bought an album off Bandcamp (DRM free music) and when one of the songs on that album got in a pointless argument about copyright and got taken down from my Spotify playlists.
Songs being taken off of Spotify is really common if you’re into older stuff as the rights get passed on when the artist dies. Though in this case it was a year old album.
I was glad I bought it DRM free as I thought they could only unlist it from the store, not from libraries… until I saw it was gone there too.
I payed MONEY for them to take it out of my library on a DRM free site. That’s like them taking my music CD and scratching it with sandpaper.Pirating literally gives me the same experience as buying it for literally no issue. (except the lossless files but who cares)
For ebooks in particular, owning what you buy isn’t that difficult though. You can legally buy DRM protected epubs in a lot of online book stores and then use the software calibre (open source) to strip the DRM. Much easier than with music, movies or software.
Yes, most Kindles allow you to load your own PDFs and .ebook files, so pirating them is inconsequential.
I‘d recommend the software calibre. Great for managing your ebook library and it can convert epub into amazons azw, mobi or kfx formats (depending on which generation kindle you have). With the right plugin you can even create WordWise data for your kindle-converted ebooks.
You don’t even necessarily need to illegally download the books, as calibre can also handle the DRM of .ebub books you bought from almost any store. Of course, sailing the seven seas is still always an option though.
I came to the same realization about my audiobooks through audible, so I’ve archived my audible account and now they can’t take my books :D
This is why I pirate my media, and you should too!
Readarr + calibre makes it very convenient and easy (the rest of the arr suite is great for other forms of media too)
Well, it would be if Readarr worked consistently.
The only issues I ever had were around authors having a bunch of books that weren’t released or were in different languages, that was solved by narrowing the profiles for what readarr finds which was a 2 minute task
Years of ongoing issues with their metadata server bricking its ability to search for content. It wasn’t an issue with your setup, it’s an issue with Readarr itself. They always fix it, but it’s kind of a joke how many times they’ve had the same problem over the years.
Too bad there’s no easy way for a tech illiterate dumb person such as myself to read a step-by-fucking-step instruction to get it all working for myself.
You basically need 3 things: readarr, a torrent client, and a VPN.
There are plenty of step by step guides and videos for most things, especially popular tools like this. The servarr wiki has install and setup instructions for all of the core arr suite apps as well, both install guides and quick start guides: https://wiki.servarr.com/readarr
Qbittorrent (torrent client) is also easy to install on windows or Linux: https://www.qbittorrent.org/ . You’re also welcome to pick another one, I just like qbittorrent.
Vpn installs vary from vpn to vpn, but pretty much all of them should also contain step by step install instructions
There are plenty of step by step guides and videos for most things, especially popular tools like this.
And of which you provided zero directions on where to look.
The servarr wiki has install and setup instructions for all of the core arr suite apps as well, both install guides and quick start guides: https://wiki.servarr.com/readarr
I read through the site and it gets to a part where it assumes I know how to setup a port reverse proxy on a server. Definitely not friendly for tech illiterate people such as myself. So this is a dogshit instruction.
Qbittorrent (torrent client) is also easy to install on windows or Linux: https://www.qbittorrent.org/ . You’re also welcome to pick another one, I just like qbittorrent.
Cool. Now where the hell do I find the books? Your instructions also suck for tech illiterate people.
Apologies for sounding rude, but you guys all preach this shit but there’s nowhere to read where they teach dumb morons like me to do this without already knowing high level networking protocols and manual VPN configuration management. And it’s really frustrating.
For finding guides and videos - just search for {thing you want to setup} setup guide, there are plenty of results for almost everything. Also, I then showed links to where to setup readarr and qbittorrent.
The only thing you need to get up and running is the OS specific guides (windows is download, run the installer, go to http://localhost:8787/ in your browser, and macos is similar. Linux is a bit of a mess, and I would recommend going the docker-compose route if you are on Linux instead) which are short and tell you every step. The reverse proxy is just a recommended guide for setting one up if you want to access it outside of your network - I don’t recommend doing it, and it’s not necessary at all (I don’t have that setup, all of my stuff is only accessible on my local network)
For finding books, use the readarr quick start guide - it goes over how to use the app, how to add authors and books to grab, etc. I also found this guide that appears to show how to do all of this including the install guide, adding authors and books, connecting to your torrent client, adding indexers, etc: https://www.rapidseedbox.com/blog/guide-to-readarr#05
Okay thank you for the elaboration. I am very dumb and impatient. We appreciate you
I know you guys conversed this far; just wanted to share with you that readarr functions like wet garbage compared to the other arr programs. Just don’t go in with high expectations with readarr, and if it ends up not working well (or at all), just know the other arrs are really top notch. Radarr works awesome and sonarr will literally keep your shows up to current for you. All that said too… there is a steep learning curve to this whole thing if you’re new to docker.
Just download a book on tech savvyness.
🤦♂️
Is there an ebook service like GOG is for games? DRM free so you can keep the books regardless of what happens to the service?
(I know it’s easy enough to remove it, but I’d rather support a service like that if I can)
Any of the third party reading apps and any epub file you store yourself. So if you buy an ebook from Amazon but get the epub version instead of Kindle then it’s protected from deletion. This is because you store it like any other document and your epub reader just reads the file.
DRM fuckery means your mileage will vary.
I do.
it’s the same with Google Books. you can’t copy text from the book you bought into your notes. you’re not allowed to copy text. i want to buy books legitimately for my research, but i cant use any of this shit.
What do you mean? Bookmarks with no labels and highlights with no indexing isn’t enough for you? What do you want, integration of open source note taking software with Google Books?!? That’s ridiculous, nobody would ever use that…
Okay but for real. I got through college using One Note’s snip tool to take pictures of the text and paste it into my digital notes. So that’s a way to do it. It does suck that we have all this tech but we won’t let it talk to each other because rich people have to get richer, even around academia.
It does suck that we have all this tech but we won’t let it talk to each other because rich people have to get richer
This is my biggest personal disillusionment and frustration with the world. If companies would commit to open interoperable data standards and allowing access through APIs, there’s so many things in life that would be better. We could have our tech actually work for us.
i used the notes feature once and something happened and they all disappeared. all of the work was just gone. cool 😎
Oof that sucks.
Finally got around to backing up my over 200 audiobooks in a DRM-free format after this post reminded me it was on my to-do list. Libation is pretty damn good.
Duh. Same goes for Steam games and most of digital content.
If you want to keep it, there’s usually always an option to sail the high seas.
Except Steam never deletes games that you already own or takes them away from you for other reasons.
Yes, they could do that in the future but its the one company where that is unlikely.
Yeah, while Gaben is still at the helm…
