Amazon is no longer allowing downloading Kindle Unlimited titles via USB
goodereader.com
goodereader.com
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?
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?
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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.
They're not talking about books you 'bought' individually.
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.
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
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. :)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.