5 ms·

Similar boat, I have not been able to open some books for the last few times I have tried.

unethical_ban 3y ago
Amazon books published after some date in 2023 have new formatting/encryption. Now I think for those new books, you need to do some hoop jumping about "send to device" with an old kindle or PC.
- rolobio 3y ago
  This is correct. My answer is simply to not buy any Kindle books. In the future, I may buy some again if I can strip DRM.
  - criddell 3y ago
    Not all Kindle books have DRM. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy to figure out which books have it and which do not. Is there a place that sells ebooks that with easily strippable DRM?
    - rolobio 3y ago
      Not that I know of. I had a book I was trying a buy a couple weeks ago, everywhere I found it had DRM. So I gave up. They lost a sale.
      - ekianjo 3y ago
        We need a gog equivalent with a no drm in books policy
        Uvix 3y ago
        So far we’ve had some individual publishers do that, but no retailer yet. At this point I think Apple’s really the only candidate for it. Everyone else is either helped by DRM (Amazon, B&N, Kobo), too small, or just don’t seem like a good fit (Google). I was hoping they’d do it after doing so with music, but at this point I’ve given up.
        utucuro 3y ago
        Ten years ago, the largest bookstores in Germany formed an alliance together with Deutsche Telekom and created exactly that. The name is Tolino, there are e-ink ebook readers, designed principally to be the anti-kindle, there is a web reader, there are iOS and Android apps and everything is synced by a cloud account you can upload your own books to or download any books you purchase from any of the bookstores. You can link your bookstore accounts to your tolino account and you get to read anything you buy from them however you want. Apart from the German ones, Belgian, Italian and Dutch bookstores joined in a few years later. So what happened afterwards? Deutsche Telekom sold the infrastructure to Rakuten, the Japanese owners of Kobo , in 2017. Interestingly, 6 years later, Tolino still exists with the same DRM-free architecture and new devices are actually developed by Rakuten.
    - goosedragons 3y ago
      Kobo, Google Play. Kobo uses there own or Adobe DRM depending if you download it through the app or website. Both are supported by DeDRM tools with the former by the "Obok" tool. Google uses Adobe DRM.
      - Uvix 3y ago
        Google Play will significantly downgrade the quality of any images, and doesn’t allow some books to be downloaded at all (mostly comics that I’ve noticed but I’m not sure if that’s all). Kobo is a much better first choice.
        criddell 3y ago
        Are you saying Google books in general have bad image quality, or that stripping the DRM somehow alters the images?
        Uvix 3y ago
        The former. (At least, in the downloads on desktop through ADE. Not sure if the mobile app and website use the same low-resolution images.)
    - ladzoppelin 3y ago
      I think everything released in 2023 has the new DRM system which is not really removable. There might be a way using a specific kindle device but I was never able to get it to work. It stinks
    - developer93 3y ago
      We should really be supporting places that sell without drm, there are some. Vote with your wallet and all that.
      - criddell 3y ago
        Good idea but does that exist? Is there a place I can buy a Michael Creighton book DRM-free?
        developer93 3y ago
        I buy from ebooks.com mostly, and recently there have been a few drm free books there. Didn't investigate the selection like.
- criddell 3y ago
  > you need to do some hoop jumping Unfortunately, converting to the older file format means you lose all the typography improvements from the newer version. Also, I believe that loophole is slowly being closed by Amazon. It’s probably not a viable long term solution.

Amazon books published after some date in 2023 have new formatting/encryption. Now I think for those new books, you need to do some hoop jumping about "send to device" with an old kindle or PC.

rolobio 3y ago
This is correct. My answer is simply to not buy any Kindle books. In the future, I may buy some again if I can strip DRM.
- criddell 3y ago
  Not all Kindle books have DRM. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy to figure out which books have it and which do not. Is there a place that sells ebooks that with easily strippable DRM?
  - rolobio 3y ago
    Not that I know of. I had a book I was trying a buy a couple weeks ago, everywhere I found it had DRM. So I gave up. They lost a sale.
    - ekianjo 3y ago
      We need a gog equivalent with a no drm in books policy
      - Uvix 3y ago
        So far we’ve had some individual publishers do that, but no retailer yet. At this point I think Apple’s really the only candidate for it. Everyone else is either helped by DRM (Amazon, B&N, Kobo), too small, or just don’t seem like a good fit (Google). I was hoping they’d do it after doing so with music, but at this point I’ve given up.
      - utucuro 3y ago
        Ten years ago, the largest bookstores in Germany formed an alliance together with Deutsche Telekom and created exactly that. The name is Tolino, there are e-ink ebook readers, designed principally to be the anti-kindle, there is a web reader, there are iOS and Android apps and everything is synced by a cloud account you can upload your own books to or download any books you purchase from any of the bookstores. You can link your bookstore accounts to your tolino account and you get to read anything you buy from them however you want. Apart from the German ones, Belgian, Italian and Dutch bookstores joined in a few years later. So what happened afterwards? Deutsche Telekom sold the infrastructure to Rakuten, the Japanese owners of Kobo , in 2017. Interestingly, 6 years later, Tolino still exists with the same DRM-free architecture and new devices are actually developed by Rakuten.
  - goosedragons 3y ago
    Kobo, Google Play. Kobo uses there own or Adobe DRM depending if you download it through the app or website. Both are supported by DeDRM tools with the former by the "Obok" tool. Google uses Adobe DRM.
    - Uvix 3y ago
      Google Play will significantly downgrade the quality of any images, and doesn’t allow some books to be downloaded at all (mostly comics that I’ve noticed but I’m not sure if that’s all). Kobo is a much better first choice.
      - criddell 3y ago
        Are you saying Google books in general have bad image quality, or that stripping the DRM somehow alters the images?
        Uvix 3y ago
        The former. (At least, in the downloads on desktop through ADE. Not sure if the mobile app and website use the same low-resolution images.)
  - ladzoppelin 3y ago
    I think everything released in 2023 has the new DRM system which is not really removable. There might be a way using a specific kindle device but I was never able to get it to work. It stinks
  - developer93 3y ago
    We should really be supporting places that sell without drm, there are some. Vote with your wallet and all that.
    - criddell 3y ago
      Good idea but does that exist? Is there a place I can buy a Michael Creighton book DRM-free?
      - developer93 3y ago
        I buy from ebooks.com mostly, and recently there have been a few drm free books there. Didn't investigate the selection like.
criddell 3y ago
> you need to do some hoop jumping Unfortunately, converting to the older file format means you lose all the typography improvements from the newer version. Also, I believe that loophole is slowly being closed by Amazon. It’s probably not a viable long term solution.