this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2025
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Kindle Is Making It Harder to Switch to Rival eReader Brands. (www.howtogeek.com)
submitted 5 days ago by Cat@ponder.cat to c/technology@lemmy.world
189 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

On February 26th, Kindle customers will lose the ability to download eBook purchases directly to their PC. If you want to switch to a rival eReader brand in the future, I suggest that you use the soon-to-be discontinued "Download and Transfer via USB" feature to archive your Kindle library.

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[–] BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Most services are forced to carry DRM only versions of Ebooks by the book publishers. But there are ways of legally removing the DRM - it's a faff but doable. I buy epubs and don't use Kindle (haven't for a long time) as it's much harder to remove the DRM and actually own your books.

But way I look at it - if I bought the Kindle version of a book, I can just download a DRM free version by sailing the seas. Fuck Amazon.

[–] TheMachineStops@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

It is very easy to remove DRM from kindle Books, but since you will not be avle to download them it will not be possible anymore.

[–] snakes_and_foxes@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

i keep getting mixed msgs on this (then again, I could be misinterpreting) but it sounds like you can still download the ebook to your kindle (it will be in .kfx format), but if you plug the kindle into the computer and copy the .kfx file to it, that you should then be able to import it into calibre on your computer and the kfx plugin should strip the DRM.

i haven't tested this to be sure yet (my kindle library is already downloaded and i've just been buying ebooks from Kobo since the Amazon announcement)

[–] TheMachineStops@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)
[–] snakes_and_foxes@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

That's where I'm getting conflicting info: I understand you won't be able to "download and transfer via USB" from the Amazon website but when you download a book from the Kindle over wifi it's still a file on your kindle that can be browsed to if you connect your Kindle to a computer via USB

Then you copy that downloaded ebook (.kfx) to your computer and import into Calibre and use the Kindle plugin that strips DRM from .kfx files.

I'm going to try that today and see if it actually works...

[–] TheMachineStops@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

It is pretty obvious why they are doing this though, but it also means you don't own them, you are renting them.