Technology

Por que no Los dos?

You will own nothing and like it!

The optimist in me says they’re doing this to avoid piracy.

Won’t pirates just buy their source copies on a different platform, so now Amazon loses the original sale as well?

both seem just as terrible to me

100%. I have always pirated, but the amount of things I pirated went way, way down when Netflix had a decent library of things to watch and was affordably priced.

Yep. Not to gloat, but I never touched Amazon's ebook marketplace.

My current e-reader is a second-hand Kindle that has a permanent message asking if I would just please connect to a WiFi network just one time just for a moment PLEEEEEASE.

I get my books from libgen, Gutenberg, or Kobo, and keep them on my computer. They're organized in Calibre, and I transfer them over on a USB cable.

I know I switched ages ago but I've never managed to port my existing library of ebooks off the kindle

I switched to Kobo a few years and couldn't be happier. I hated supporting Amazon.

That is no different than Kobo. Thus far, Rakuten have been pretty good about not caring more than the bare minimum. But there is nothing stopping them from doing the same bullshit with firmware updates to the kobos and drm updates to the store and apps.

I am finally migrating from kindle to kobo (tried kindle to boox last year and it was bad...) but I am under no illusions that I am just hoping one company is better than another. I mean, the other is Amazon so it is a pretty safe bet. But still.

Try this python script: https://github.com/Jedi425/BulkKindleUSBDownloader

Source: https://social.wildeboer.net/@jwildeboer/114002221924654676

I just got a Kobo color (don't recommend the color feature; no book is ever going to use it except the red-letter Bible and House of Leaves) and gifted the old Kindle to a friend. I e-reader is an awesome gift actually because for a lot of people it's something they would never evenly in years take a chance on, but that they would love it if they tried.

If your model accepts a custom OS, some of them make decent e-ink displays for weather, family photos, etc. Things look good in the black and white ones especially.

Adding on to this that Barnes and Noble sells DRMed ePUB files that are relatively easy to strip DRM from using Calibre.

So if you can't find a book anywhere else, at least they don't use a proprietary format and still allow you to download your books using their PC software.

I was a semi-early adopter in the ebook space and I have refused to get onboard with the kindle ecosystem from the start. There's no reason for their proprietary format other than complete control over things they pretend to sell you. Amazon is also the Walmart of books and uses their position to browbeat publishers and authors into taking smaller cuts of sales.

One of my friends got a book published and I waited and waited for it to be available anywhere else. Eventually just bought what was probably a print on demand copy from Amazon because that's the only place his publisher sold books. I never buy physical books anymore but I'd rather do that than buy a kindle book.

early models didn't have wifi, only usb or cellular from one provider or another--and those models' 3g connectivity was killed off years ago.

this will obsolete all the non-wifi kindles still in use.

If only there was a library for geniuses where I can read in a format that billionaires aren't able to gatekeep what I read on my e-ink device.

Some sort of website, perhaps one on the internet?

I recommend actually listening to some authors.

The "gatekeeping" back in the days before ebooks was infinitely worse than it is now. These days? Basically anyone who can fill out a webform can publish a kindle book. And other stores aren't much harder. And those ebooks can be sold indefinitely.

Contrast that with needing to find a publisher who is willing to allocate some of their limited production time to you. And then hope that Borders et al are willing to put you on the shelf. And then realize that you are never getting another penny for that book because the first MMPB run ran out and you aren't getting a second because you didn't sell enough to justify it.

Kobo connected to calibre web is the ultimate freedom/privacy ereader

Which model did you end up with? Do you like it?

Kobo and Nook ebooks are still ePUB and easy enough to free from their DRM.