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The Bitter Reality of Ebooks and the Kindle Model
- ggm 3y agoJeez, run calibre already.
- markx2 3y ago"As of 16/08/2023, Amazon’s checkout button for Kindle ebooks is labeled “Buy Now”. Just as on Steam you 'Buy' and on Steam it'll tell you the number of games you "Own". For books, I de-DRM them and I can then read them in other clients, notably The Books app from Apple.
- dxs 3y agoNot the ideal solutions, but they work: Try https://libgen.rs/ https://libgen.rs/ or https://zlibrary.to/ https://zlibrary.to/
- willsmith72 3y agoI love libgen. I know we've switched completely away from indie bookstores and consolidated them into the behemoths, but I wonder if there's a future where authors and readers can win with cheap ebooks without so many middle men. Even when I do think of buying an ebook, so often there's a $15 price tag. Purely as a consumer, that doesn't ever seem like a good deal to me.
- Novosell 3y agoIdk about globally, but at least in sweden it is usually far cheaper to buy pockets than it is to buy ebooks. Makes no god damm sense.
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoLibGen is great, Z-Library is a fairly controversial for-profit endeavour, but Anna’s Archive is now the best single recommendation. Not only does Anna’s Archive have all the LibGen and Sci-Hub stuff in its index, it also contains myriad publications that came from other channels like Z or Internet Archive.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- biggestdummy 3y agoI've written four books. Each book is the result of thousands of hours of experience and hundreds of hours of work. My books are all over these sites, and have been used to train AI. Without my consent. I didn't write books to make money - I've made the national bestseller list and still get paid < minimum wage for my writing time. But it is disrepectful to my time and expertise to use such pirated sites. You probably make money with your mind and your fingers and your creativity. Why wouldn't you take some tiny part of the money you make and use it to allow me to do the same. And for those who say "its the same as a library" - libraries buy books. And lend them on a limited basis. Sites like this are just simple theft.
- atlasunshrugged 3y agoCan I ask what your books were about? Any tips for a first time author?
- kemayo 3y agoRegarding taking your Kindle books with you... the standard recommendation is to use the DeDRM plugin[1] for Calibre to convert your DRM'd books into plain old ePUBs. My understanding (I'm not a lawyer) is that this is perfectly legal to do in the US, because you're allowed to remove DRM from content you've purchased (a license to) for personal use. [1]: https://github.com/noDRM/DeDRM_tools https://github.com/noDRM/DeDRM_tools
- drakenot 3y agoThis doesn’t work anymore with the latest version of Kindle DRM unfortunately. It has been changed substantially
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y agoThat's why the Kobo Libra 2 is superior especially the sunken screen which is more paper like than any other e reader I tried including Kindles.
- mewse-hn 3y agoYeah that's the device I use. Side-load books and side-step DRM
- ekianjo 3y ago> sunken screen What do you mean?
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y agoThe flush screens of the Kindle have an extra layer to achieve the flushness which adds some reflectivity and makes the screen less paper like. The Libra 2 doesn't have a flush screen and appears much sharper and far more paper like in my eyes and many others.
- ekianjo 3y ago
- Barrin92 3y agoAll true but at the end of the day, just buy a physical copy to support the author ,download the ebook from libgen or whatever and just use the kindle as hardware. In some way I admire people who try to abide by all the 50 pages of legalese you're forced to agree to but I couldn't be bothered with it. Especially all the books she lost that were associated with the account. If anyone had bought something from me once and lost access because Amazon screwed them over, you can't convince me there's one author in the world who'd care about you pirating it.
- DennisP 3y agoIf you're downloading from libgen anyway, you might as well buy the kindle version to support the author, instead of the dead trees. Or any other ebook, or the audible.
- abdullahkhalids 3y agoOne solution is to buy and donate a copy of the book to a local library. Cory Doctorow actually had a system for this for his earlier books for matching teachers who wanted hardcopies of his books and donators who wanted to "pay" Cory in some way [1]. [1] https://craphound.com/content/donate/ https://craphound.com/content/donate/
- jrm4 3y agoYeah, this just can't stand under the absurdity of trying to apply a dead-tree-world model to a digital world. I don't know how to get there, but the DRM thing just needs to burn down.
- nnx 3y agoI wonder if NFTs could be a solution to ensure interoperability and resale value of ebooks. No DRM neeeded, which are useless anyway since it's easy to download any book online, and it's all about the legal ownership title (the NFT) and possibly exclusive benefits for holding one (eg. access to author's community or events).
- bryanmikaelian 3y agoCheck out https://book.io https://book.io
- atlasunshrugged 3y agoLost me at Web 3. Sorry for the snark but do books really need to be turned into decentralized assets? Is that really the optimal way to solve this problem for consumers/industry?
- jacknews 3y agoQuite right about being a 'system'. Society is made of systems, and therefore the kind of systems we allow to exist dictate how we live.
- davidw 3y agoSome valid points here, but there's also a little bit to be said for the stability of Amazon. For now, at least. I've bought an ebook or two directly from the author and I'm not sure I could find them any more, so it feels more like my money went up in smoke. Another thing I don't love about those "buy it from me directly" people is they're not submitting their work to reviews. Yes, there are problems with review systems and they can be gamed, but I still think they're better than "hey, trust me".
- type0 3y ago> there's also a little bit to be said for the stability of Amazon What do you mean? Microsoft is a financially stable company as well and they closed their eBook Store https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-ebook-apocalypse-drm/ https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-ebook-apocalypse-drm/
- marcus_holmes 3y agoI buy direct from authors wherever possible. No problems so far. I don't trust reviewers (and definitely don't trust Amazon's review system). I maintain my own library using Calibre. I have a directory on my laptop that has my books in it, and use Calibre to maintain and access it. I back it up onto an external hard drive about once a month. I briefly experimented with creating a Gitlab repo to store books in, so that it was at least as safe and secure as my code. But it's just easier with Calibre. Also I didn't feel entirely comfortable using Gitlab's free service for something other than what it is intended for, and I've learned the lesson that storing things long-term on free accounts isn't wise.
- dallas 3y agoI've had a Kindle of some sort since 2011 and not once have I read a book through Amazon... not due to avoidance on my part, just haven't needed to! My first device was an "ad supported" Kindle 4 but since I never signed in to Amazon with it, I never saw an ad. I read library books on a Kobo Touch and use the Kindle 10th gen for DRM-free, purchased e-books. Calibre is amazing. I've got fond memories of using Plucker on my Palm m505 to read books found on FTP sites back in the early 2000s and cleaned up with Perl.
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoI, too, have had a Kindle since 2011 and never read a book through Amazon. Every time I purchased a new Kindle, I put it in airplane mode the moment I took it out of the box. Then, I just loaded books onto it over USB. In fact, I have never paid for an ebook at all – already in 2011 the ebook filesharing community was well developed, and today LibGen and Anna’s Archive have 95% of everything I want to read in English. Through Internet Archive scans of library holdings, Anna’s Archive now has loads of fairly obscure twentieth-century publications that I never expected to see in digital form unless I, or some other member of the community, had scanned and uploaded them ourselves.
- simonbarker87 3y ago> have never paid for an ebook at all Not snarking, genuine question: how do you expect the authors to make a living creating and writing the content you enjoy reading if you don’t pay for it? Do you only read content that authors publish for free?
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoMuch of what I read – on linguistics, art cinema, or art music – is published by academic presses. No matter how much a scholarly publication might interest the general public, those books are usually priced at a level where only university libraries, and occasionally hired faculty, are expected to actually buy them. The retail price of what I have read in the last month alone already goes into the thousands of euro. For English-language works of fiction that I will read a single time, I have no qualms about downloading them. People in English-speaking countries could get these for free through their public library, whether there on the shelves or through ILL. What, I have to pay for them just because where I am, I have no access to such libraries? I still buy a lot of physical books, but I tend to purchase only what I know I will read multiple times over the years. That means, in the first place, poetry. And since poetry is a genre where page layout really matters, and ebooks still struggle with complex and large-format layout, it is especially nice to have the physical book.
- dwheeler 3y agoIt should be illegal to say "buy" when you don't get full rights. Call it "rent" or "lease", but "buy" should only mean "buy".
- javajosh 3y agoI agree with this. I think that current Kindle users have a valid class action lawsuit against Amazon. It's fraud. And if that lawsuit fails, then it only adds fuel to the antitrust fire.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pvg 3y agoYou don't get 'full rights' when you buy a regular book, car or house.
- type0 3y agoThere's a distinct difference of buying DRM-free ebook and renting DRM ebook and thinking you can use it on any device that you own - and "owning" here is still a central thesis.
- pvg 3y agoThere is a difference but the difference isn't 'there is a trivial definition of buy' as the GP suggests.
- nerdbert 3y agoYou get a commonly understood set of rights which critically includes the right to re-sell it.
- dredmorbius 3y agoThose rights of ownership tend to be governed by universal standards such as fee simple ownership (of real property), or within the US, the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), which is established at the individual state and territorial level, and includes both perpetual ownership and resale ("first sale doctrine) rights, see: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Commercial_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Commercial_Code> "Licenced" usage rights are individually prescribed, at least at the level of individual products and licensors, and may well be specific to individual transactions. The specific rights granted or denied may be changed at any time without notice as well, or simply revoked outright, which has occurred numerous times in the case of digital works, rather notoriously with a version of George Orwell's 1984 sold^Wlicenced from Amazon, Inc.: <https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106989048 https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106989...> (NPR, 2009) "The Kindle Lawsuit: Protecting Readers From Future Abuses" <https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/08/kindle-lawsuit-protecting-readers-future-abuses https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/08/kindle-lawsuit-protect...> (EFF, 2009).
- cortesoft 3y ago> Unfortunately, if the book is DRM-protected (very likely!), you would need to strip out DRM before conversion which is downright illegal LMAOOOOOO!!!!! Isn't it legal to circumvent DRM for personal use?
- dredmorbius 3y agoIn the general sense, no. There are very specific exceptions to prohibitions against DRM circumvention, but many of those are so encumbered as to be useless. The standards and regulations addressing these are long, complex, and difficult to parse. See Cory Doctorow's discussion here: "The new DRM-breaking exemptions just dropped" (2021-10-28) <https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/28/clintons-ghost/#felony-contempt-of-business-model https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/28/clintons-ghost/#felony-co...> And the US Federal Register, "Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for Access Control Technologies" (2021-10-28): <https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/10/28/2021-23311/exemption-to-prohibition-on-circumvention-of-copyright-protection-systems-for-access-control https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/10/28/2021-23...> I see listed: educational and derivative uses; accessibility of audiovisual works; accessibilty of literary works; medical device data; the unlocking, jailbreaking, and repair of computer programs and systems; security research; software presentation; video game preservation; and 3D printers. But as a general exemption "for personal use", nothing at all.
- TheOtherHobbes 3y agoKindles now read Epubs just fine. Mobi is a deprecated format. You have to email the Epub to your Kindle account, but that's the only bit of friction from that side. From the other side, DeDRM(doDRM) and the KFX input plugin can remove the latest Kindle DRM, and Calibre can convert the AZW folders to an Epub.
- ekianjo 3y ago> You have to email the Epub to your Kindle account, That's horrible just to think about it.
- Turing_Machine 3y agoThere's also a "Send to Kindle" app that lets you just drag and drop the file. It's hard to get any less complicated than that. The Kindle doesn't even have to be connected to your computer.
- simonbarker87 3y agoI’m probably an outlier in tech circles but I really like the kindle experience, it’s convenient, the store has all the books I could ever want to read, the price is reasonable and since I never reread books I really don’t mind that I don’t own them forever. I’ve probably bought 200 books from Amazon since I got my kindle back in 2010. If I had to go through the hassles of stripping drm and side loading the books I’d read less as I just don’t plan that well. Arguably since physical books do degrade over decades you also don’t own those forever but since the time frame is so long it’s a moot point.
- ekianjo 3y ago> physical books do degrade over decades you also don’t own those forever There's this interesting machine called a scanner that solves that problem.
- jemmyw 3y agoPretty much the same, except I do re-read the odd book... and they're all still there. I've not had a Kindle book disappear. I used to use calibre, but at some point I realised I was just curating a massive library for no reason. Same with music files. The time spent looking after a collection was time that I could spend reading new books or listening to new music, or doing something else. So yeah, all power to those who feel a need to own physical copies of everything, I no longer subscribe to that ideal. I'd rather a library model where we pay collectively.
- TMWNN 3y ago>I’m probably an outlier in tech circles but I really like the kindle experience Why do you think that you are an outlier? That every discussion of it online inevitably descends into discussion of DRM does not mean that people (techie or not) in general like using Kindle and its ecosystem. I also really like Kindle (and the newest one's faster speed makes it all the better). iOwning one surprised me in how it changed the way I read. I did not anticipate the freedom of being able to move between books at any time for any reason. I have many dozens of cards from libraries around the US, and can borrow almost anything at any time. It's great being able to hear about an interesting book, finding it at overdrive.com (which searches across multiple libraries), then borrowing it within 30 seconds.
- southernplaces7 3y agoThe author's repeatedly-stated fixation about how illegal or sometimes "barely legal" all this DRM evasion nonsense regarding the kindle is comes out as absurd. Who gives a shit? Stupid, self-serving, bad laws absolutely should be ignored and there's nothing in the least bit immoral about it, especially considering how Amazon and similar treat you as a supposed "owner" of content you bought. Just quit the silly hand wringing and get to stripping that DRM parasitism away, straight to hell. No, you're not in any way immoral for doing so.