Some DRM free bookstores and publishers
buttondown.com
Hi again, this short little thing is going to be a short email on places to buy DRM Free EBooks. Because Amazon has taken away the ability for people to...
  • Rolder@reddthat.comEnglish
    9·
    8 hours ago

    I use a kobo e-reader and it works a treat. Looks and feels good, and can load any ol downloaded epub book without issue with Calibre.

  • orclev@lemmy.worldEnglish
    491·
    13 hours ago

    I recently switched to Kobo as a Kindle alternative, but that also highlighted a problem. Kindle Unlimited includes a TOS for publishers that prevents them from selling their books on any other platform. A significant chunk of the Kindle catalogue is also included in Kindle Unlimited, which means a significant chunk of authors works are locked into the Amazon ecosystem.

    It’s been very annoying to discover how many book series I’ve been reading that are simply unavailable elsewhere because they opted to take part in Kindle Unlimited.

    • bassomitron@lemmy.worldEnglish
      311·
      13 hours ago

      There’s a reason tons of major authors have come out against Amazon. I think Brandon Sanderson even went so far as to write books in secret and shadow drop them onto other book platforms, purposefully avoiding Amazon entirely. Also, Kindle Unlimited is an awful deal for authors, they get literal pennies for every reader.

      • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zipEnglish
        141·
        13 hours ago

        To my knowledge, Sanderson has not spoken out against Kindle*. His kickstarter was mostly to advertise Dragonsteel which is likely going to become his own publishing house at some point.

        And while… fuck amazon, Kindle is a ridiculously author friendly platform to publish on and is the only reason we have so many amazing self published authors these days. And while KU is not great per book, it is an excellent way to get people interested in an author and buy their latest books. I strongly encourage actually reading what authors say instead of what users and armchair financial analysts do.

        *: I would be incredibly shocked if he did. I think he is definitely becoming more “woke” than “mormon” these days based off his writing and character details but he is still very much a business person

        • orclev@lemmy.worldEnglish
          72·
          12 hours ago

          Unfortunately Kindle Unlimited is a Faustian bargain due to the exclusivity clause. We’re now stuck in a catch 22. There are excellent (for consumers) alternatives out there to Kindle/Amazon, the most prominent of which is Kobo which has a variety of very competitive e-readers. Additionally Kobo Plus is essentially Kindle Unlimited, although I don’t know for sure whether it has an exclusivity clause (I hope it doesn’t, and the policies of Kobo make me suspect not, but I haven’t confirmed that). The biggest problem from a consumers perspective is simply that many authors works are just not available from the Kobo (or other) store.

          However the consumer perspective is only half the picture. From the perspective of an author/publisher Kindle is undeniably the largest platform out there with Kobo being one of their largest competitors (in terms of e-readers, I suspect in just ebooks Apple is bigger) and it’s minuscule compared to Kindle. While functionally the Kobo store and Kobo Plus give everything that the Kindle store and Kindle Unlimited do, what they are severely lacking in is customers. An author could choose to publish on Kindle and Kobo as well as make their books available on Kobo Plus, but doing so means foregoing the option of Kindle Unlimited which will result in fewer consumers having access to that authors works at least in the short term.

          So we arrive at the catch 22. Consumers get a much better deal with Kobo, but lose access to many of the authors works they may want to read. Authors need to stick with Kindle and Kindle Unlimited if they want to reach as many consumers as they can, but doing so discourages consumers from switching to Kindle/Kindle Unlimited alternatives like Kobo/Kobo Plus. Until enough consumers move off Kindle Unlimited authors won’t want to abandon it, but until enough authors abandon it consumers will struggle to move off of Kindle Unlimited.

    • Bieren@lemmy.worldEnglish
      101·
      11 hours ago

      This has been my issue as well.

      And when you sail the high seas to liberate books. You might get the actually book, without issues. You might get a file named your book, that has 17 pages of that book and then the rest is a manual to fix a car.

      • bob_lemon@feddit.orgEnglish
        91·
        11 hours ago

        There’s an archive of books belonging to a certain anna, which has not failed me yet.

      • orclev@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        11 hours ago

        Plus I actually want to support the authors. My issue is with Amazon not the authors, so I want to pay for the books I’m reading so they can keep making more of them. If I could buy the books directly from the authors in some cases I would, and in all cases if it was available from the Kobo store I’d be willing to buy it there. Unfortunately that damn exclusivity clause on Kindle Unlimited means my options for them are Amazon, Amazon, or Amazon (or roll the dice on piracy and not support the author, not to mention even when it is the book in question the quality is often poor).

          • orclev@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            8 hours ago

            In some cases very, but in others not so much. Some of them have Patreon accounts or other ways to accept payment, but in many cases you’ll be doing good just to find a working email address for them. Ideally though I’d prefer to just pay for the books outright rather than trying to do some kind of grey area thing where I’d pirate the book and then donate the cost to them (if for no other reason than it causes tax headaches for everyone involved).

    • sigmaklimgrindset@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      4·
      11 hours ago

      Related question: are Kindle Unlimited books digital only? Can you not buy physical copies of it?

      Ngl I still buy physical books, and I use my ereader to check out ebooks from the library and/or sail the high seas, so I have no idea what’s going on in the ebook ecosystems.

      • orclev@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        11 hours ago

        Sort of? Kindle Unlimited itself is digital only, but the exclusivity clause only applies to ebooks I think, so in theory you could purchase a physical copy elsewhere.

        I’ve pretty much entirely abandoned physical books. It’s just far more convenient using an e-reader which has a backlight for reading in the dark, fits thousands of books in a device that’s pocket sized, and let’s me instantly purchase, download, and start reading the next book in a series as soon as I finish the last one.

        I do have physical books still, but I haven’t bought new ones in about a decade now.

    • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zipEnglish
      72·
      13 hours ago

      I strongly encourage POLITELY reaching out to your favorite authors on social media to talk to them about this.

      One of my favorite guilty pleasure reads is very open that this is why his ebooks are only on kindle. But he is also looking into alternatives (especially since he is now big enough to have at least a small publisher) because the readers he is trying to help with KU are the ones asking him to get away from it.

      Not going to tear down my de-drm setup any time soon. But optimistic I might be able to before amazon does it for me.

      • orclev@lemmy.worldEnglish
        61·
        12 hours ago

        Not going to tear down my de-drm setup any time soon. But optimistic I might be able to before amazon does it for me.

        As far as I’m aware it’s now too late for that. Amazon has removed the ability to download ebooks to your computer meaning the only way to access azw files now is if you’ve found a way to rip them out of the Kindle memory (not possible using normal means, but maybe if you’ve cracked one open and probed the flash memory directly).

        I used to de-drm all my kindle purchases using the manual download links Amazon had, but those have now been removed. That’s actually what prompted me to switch to Kobo. I’m not going to “purchase” a book I can’t create a backup of.

        • uzay@infosec.pubEnglish
          2·
          9 hours ago

          If you own a kindle reader you can just connect it via usb and dedrm the kfx files.

          • orclev@lemmy.worldEnglish
            31·
            8 hours ago

            No you can’t. They changed the firmware so eBook downloads now go into a partition that’s not accessible when mounting the kindle over USB.

        • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zipEnglish
          31·
          12 hours ago

          I haven’t checked this week (yay, might already be too late) but my understanding is that amazon only disabled the web interface to download ebooks to a computer.

          Using the (Windows) Kindle for PC App at a sufficiently old version was still working last week even after people had claimed the web interface was disabled.

          It is only a matter of time but it is also something that the vast majority of people are too computer illiterate to do so it is probably going to be a decent amount of time. Cost amazon more to disable it than to let people do it.

    • oce 🐆@jlai.luEnglish
      2·
      12 hours ago

      Kobo was bought by Rakuten in 2012, Rakuten is the Japanese Amazon, except it failed to fully scale internationally.

      • orclev@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        12 hours ago

        While that may be true, so far at least they seem to be doing an OK job. Their ebooks are often sold sans-DRM, and in the cases they aren’t every one I’ve gotten has used Adobe Digital Editions which are easy to strip the DRM from (and is a widely supported standard unlike Amazon’s proprietary DRM scheme). Additionally their e-reader devices, while not open hardware are repairable with disassembly guides provided by them and they even sell replacement components like screens. I have not verified this claim, but they also claim to use recycled plastic for manufacturing them and recycled cardboard for their packaging (should you care about such things).

        For better or worse, if you want a Kindle like experience, you’re likely going to be forced into working with a large-ish corporation, but despite the average experience when doing so that doesn’t mean that corporation must be an evil anti-consumer hellscape of rapaciousness and greed. So far at least, Rakuten/Kobo seem to be doing OK by their customers.

        • oce 🐆@jlai.luEnglish
          2·
          4 hours ago

          Rakuten is a big mess of data tracking and advertisment but I’m glad to hear Kobo remains a good product.

  • bpev@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    12 hours ago

    Anyone got store recs for non-english books? Or that mostly just gonna vary a ton by language?

    • doodledup@lemmy.worldEnglish
      110·
      10 hours ago

      This is the answer to everything ain’t it? You probably neve purchased a book in your life and just came here proudly to say this.

  • RedstoneValley@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    9 hours ago

    Is there any way to liberate existing ebooks now that Amazon has pulled the plug on downloading? An unfortunate friend of mine has “bought" Books from Amazon for thousands of euros and he just now finds out that he doesn’t seem to own them. I’d help him free his books if there is a possibility.

    • zarenki@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2·
      8 hours ago

      If you have a rooted Android device or a jailbroken Kindle device, yes, you can still use Calibre DeDRM and KFX Input plugins on the kindle ebooks downloaded on them. It just takes a bit more setup with getting the key you need.