Combined with the announcement that they're killing the old Kindles as well...this is 100% about preventing people from liberating DRM from their books. Full stop. They are closing each and every remaining hole.
This is absolutely what it is.
The easiest way to strip drm from a kindle book was through this app. You download the file, strip the drm, done. I think newer versions of the app made it harder? But old versions were still supported.<p>The more locked down kindle mobile apps and kindle e-readers make it more difficult, but stripping the drm will always be possible.
I wonder if it'll actually work? At the moment you can pretty much go to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Genesis" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Genesis</a> and download whatever.
Probably it will have a very measurable effect. By every day it gets a bit harder to discover such services - if you know, you know. If you have to ask, you have already lost.<p>Also, AI chatbots outright refuse to give any answer that is remote related to piracy (or any adjacent topics). Since they take over the role of search engines, that's also a big factor IMO.
I stopped doing Kindle purchases in the last few years because I sensed they were going in this direction. There are tons of vendors that will give you an epub of most titles. They often come with Adobe DRM but the UX of breaking that is even easier than how it used to be with Kindle.
For me it's the other way round - I used to buy from them when I could dedrm, and ensure that they can never pull this kind of bait and switch on me. Every ebook I've bought can be read on any device I own. I will not accept any other level of service.
Which is silly because you can easily just use OCR and screenshots to create DRM free versions of Kindle books.
Not to mention it’s as easy to download books from Anna’s Archive as it is to buy them from Amazon. It’s weird going through so much effort to lock down books people already paid for.<p>I wonder how much this is about making it difficult for people to migrate to another platform. I recently switched to Kobo and the reader is far superior to Kindle. I had a hell of a time moving my library though.
OCR'd ebooks are universally trash. For one, all formatting is gone. Anything in the book other than ASCII characters will vanish. You lose links within the book and all other advanced features.<p>And OCR is generally just not accurate enough and still makes very visible mistakes throughout the text.<p>Have you read many OCR'd ebooks? I have, and every single one was massively inferior. Most I would consider barely readable.
What OCR do you guys use? I have only seen OCR that makes a lot of errors. Having it be usable requires tons of manual review. I probably wouldn't trust an LLM to do that review because it may introduce its own errors.<p>Edit: downvoters, would you like to answer my question? I would genuinely like to know. I thought based on the confidence of the comment above there must be a super accurate OCR I've never heard of, but after seeing the sibling comment I'm going to guess there isn't.
> they're killing the old Kindles as well<p>Wait, what? What's the scope, and when does it happen?
I got this April 8th:<p>"Dear Customer,<p>Thank you for being a longtime Kindle customer. We're glad our devices have served you well for as long as they have. Starting May 20, 2026 — 14 to 18 years after their initial launches — we are discontinuing support for Kindle devices released in 2012 or earlier. Here's what this means for you:<p>You can continue to read books already downloaded on these devices, but you will not be able to purchase, borrow, or download additional books on them after that date.
If you deregister or factory reset these devices, you will not be able to re-register or use these devices in any way.<p>Affected devices include Kindle 1st and 2nd Generation, Kindle DX and DX Graphite, Kindle Keyboard, Kindle 4, Kindle Touch, Kindle 5, and Kindle Paperwhite 1st Generation.<p>To minimize any disruption, we're offering a promotional code for 20% off select new Kindle devices B4PT5XAJ74 as well as a $20 eBook credit that will be automatically added to your account after purchasing a new device (valid through June 20th, 2026, 11:59pm PST - Terms and Conditions apply). Our newer Kindle devices bring meaningful improvements in screen quality, performance and accessibility — and you'll have access to your complete Kindle library and the Kindle Store. You can also continue to read all your books on our free Kindle apps (Android, iOS, Mac, and PC) and Kindle for Web.<p>If you have any questions or require assistance, please visit <a href="https://www.amazon.com/help/kindle/devicedeprecation" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/help/kindle/devicedeprecation</a>.<p>Sincerely,
The Kindle Team"
"or use these devices in any way"?<p>My jailbroken Kindle has been sitting in a drawer for a while, but I do go into phases where I am using it heavily for months at a time. But, what I'm really getting at is, I don't find myself having to undertake the procedure to root a Kindle on a regular basis.<p>Could someone clarify for me -- if I nab another secondhand device from eBay after May 20, will I be able to jailbreak it?
Generally speaking, they auto update, and the latest firmware is always patched to not be jailbreakable. However airplane mode easily dodges the auto update process, and new vulnerabilities are found to enable jailbreaking <i>eventually</i>.<p>When I bought mine, it was updated to the latest firmware. I wanted to jailbreak mine, the method was “there isn’t one yet” so I set it in airplane mode. For a bit I manually copied all books over usb to the kindle, or disabled airplane mode to read new books if there wasn’t a new firmware version out yet anyway. A few months later, there was a jailbreak method. Now ive jailbroken. I can even connect it to the internet, and auto updates are prevented.<p>If the kindle is old enough it doesn’t recieve updates anyway though, then it should be very easy.<p><a href="https://kindlemodding.org/kindle-models.html" rel="nofollow">https://kindlemodding.org/kindle-models.html</a>
wtf. I’ve had my kindle since 2011, the battery still lasts weeks, it works perfectly, and I frequently praise Amazon for this. wtf.<p>Will I be able to load books via USB? Or there is some new DRM the kindle won’t be able to decrypt?
You can load DRM free books. Amazon already killed their method of loading DRM laden eBooks onto older Kindles by USB in the last year or so.
Yeah this is my question. My Kindle has been in airplane mode since the day I bought it.<p>As long as I can still keep loading books on it over USB, and it's just their DRM ecosystem that will stop working, that's fine with me.<p>But if they are aggressively bricking the units, if I accidentally turn on wifi by accident and it just completely stops working, I will be extremely pissed.
It’s sort of funny that this kind of thing could be, not just something that they will probably just get away with, but totally uncontested and not even surprising really. Just sorta like, yeah, obviously you don’t own your library and they’ll cut off access to it whenever they want!
Access to your library continues to be available with free apps on phone, or Windows, or a newer Kindle as well as any browser, so the loss of support of 14 year old mobile devices doesn’t seem like huge news. There can’t be too many still in use even.
The article appears to be about “Kindle for PC.” It does look like there’s a Windows 11 app, though, for folks who’ve switched to the post-QA OS.
I would expect most of them have had their batteries fail long ago. Especially if they were disused for an extended period of time.
I replaced the battery on my kindle 4 not that long ago. It had the best UX for extended reading when compared to newer kindles.<p>The biggest downside was not having a frontlit display.<p>I recently switch to an xteink x4, and found that several others in that community migrated from kindle 4s as well. So there are still some number of users in the world that value the device.
> To minimize any disruption, we're offering a promotional code for 20% off select new Kindle devices B4PT5XAJ74 as well as a $20 eBook credit that will be automatically added to your account after purchasing a new device (valid through June 20th, 2026, 11:59pm PST - Terms and Conditions apply).<p>That does minimize the disruption for me. In fact I will never buy a new kindle nor buy an ebook from amazon ever again.
Not necessarily? There was a post just a year ago on how somebody jailbroke the kindle books from the web UI.<p>I think the more plausible and likely explanations are:<p>1. Kindles take a beating when people actually use them instead of putting them in a drawer. Not many older kindles are still in circulation that are old + used. How good is a 14 year old lithium battery <i>at best</i> doing?<p>2. Added to the above, how is a 14 year old CPU doing when trying to support modern features and eBooks that now have metadata that did not exist at the time, such as fancier typesetting and color?<p>3. As for the Windows app, it's terrible. Horrible. Awful. Nobody liked it. Nobody uses it. It will not be missed.
I strongly disagree. If it's doing well enough for the owner then it's doing well enough. I don't understand how one can tell someone else that their computer is unacceptably slow for that other individual's personal use.<p>This is a really unfortunate move by Amazon. My next e-reader will be one that I own (instead of just rent).<p>Glad that I took the time to jailbreak and pause updates on my 2017 kindle paperwhite while I could.
I'd suggest cheap Android-based Chinese e-Ink e-readers if you want flexibility. My current one is a Bigme B6, which was for sale in my country a few months ago.<p>Their main advantage is providing access to all e-reading apps available on the Google Play Store, including Amazon's own Kindle app, as well as sideloaded ones such as KOReader.<p>On the downside, the battery life on those isn't as good as that of dedicated Kindles, Kobos, or other lightweight e-readers, but they still hold a charge for four or five days if one turns off their antennas, which is plenty of time to recharge them.<p>As for the ebooks themselves, I switched to purchasing from Kobo and other ebook stores. Some sell DRM-less ePubs, which is nice, while those that come with DRM can be easily liberated. And for the occasional Kindle-exclusive that is struck with (temporarily) unbreakable DRM, the Kindle app, although annoying, works well enough.
Kobo, syncing with a home library (CalibreWeb) works well.<p>I do miss physical buttons a little, but that’s minor gripe.
I'm pleased with OBOOK5. It runs Obook OS which is a Linux OS. Never nagged me to connect to WiFi or anything, I simply plugged a cable to transfer my local stuff.<p>Also hearing good things about XTEINK X4.
I have an XTEINK X4. It's quite small, but if that's ok with you, then it's a fantastic little reader.
Same here, I quite enjoy it. Plus there is open source software available, such as crosspoint. It’s easy to flash and an opus call away to change the behavior if you want something to work differently.
I’ve had a pair of Nook Simple Touch for over ten years and they are wonderful for PDFs. Stored 100% offline. Good for prepper books.
Both my Kindle Touch and my Kindle Paperwhite gen1 are still completely fine. And I havent noticed any typesetting etc that doesnt work.<p>All of these discontinued devices support the AWZ4-format (which can be de-drmed and what im guessing this whole thing is about), but the newer ones use KFX which locks you perfectly into the Amazon and Kindle-ecosystem
both my kindle and wife's work great and we have been using them regularly. they are actually very well made and durable devices.
> Not necessarily? There was a post just a year ago on how somebody jailbroke the kindle books from the web UI.<p>I used that research to build something similar. It only works for manga and comics right now, but I have been tinkering with implementing glyph support as well to be able to handle full books.<p><a href="https://github.com/Alexia/kandle-downloader" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/Alexia/kandle-downloader</a><p>The original research is here, but the web site is down right now. <a href="https://blog.pixelmelt.dev/kindle-web-drm/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.pixelmelt.dev/kindle-web-drm/</a>
Probably not the best place to ping for technical support, but, since you claim to be the author, and I don't see any "Issues" on your GH...<p>Any idea why your script does not seem to flag as a valid greasemonkey script when I try to use it in the Falkon (KDE) browser? Even if I attempt to add it manually, the script then disappears from my gm scripts.
> I don't see any "Issues" on your GH...<p>Issues and PRs are available to open.(I just have not gotten any yet.)<p>> Any idea why your script does not seem to flag as a valid greasemonkey script when I try to use it in the Falkon (KDE) browser?<p>Honestly, no idea. I have only tested it with Tampermonkey on Firefox. Manually installing it should still work.
I just replaced the battery on my Kindle 3rd gen (2010?) and it's basically as good as new now. Batteries are easy to find online.
> Nobody uses it. It will not be missed.<p>Well, I happen to use it everyday. I honestly don't know what exactly is "terrible/horrible/awful" about it. I'm neutral about its UX - neither memorable nor despicable.
It may be missed if the new app's UX turns out to be worse on whatever metrics you're using.
I still own my voyage from 2014 era. Amazon forcing new formats is their choice. Deprecating old kindles is a choice. This is all about ending people's ability to remove DRM from books they bought.<p>I'll never own a kindle again. Does anyone know which platforms work with Calibre De-DRM? Or do we need to build a screen cap tool for transforming books to an open format?
I've had good luck with my Kobo, for those books bought through their store. (I strip DRM from everything I can, if I can't buy without in the first place.)
Kobo seems to be the current leader. You can also load KoReader and Tailscale on it
After Anthropic wholesale pirated millions of books, and got only a slap on the wrist and no jail time, and Meta did almost the same, I've decided that "Anna's" plus used physical books plus printed new books are the right combination.
> After Anthropic wholesale pirated millions of books<p>It's so much worse, they've literally destroyed real physical books in the hopes of that helping them "workaround" copyright, which we "regular" citizens need to comply with: <a href="https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/06/anthropic-destroyed-millions-of-print-books-to-build-its-ai-models/" rel="nofollow">https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/06/anthropic-destroyed-milli...</a><p>I guess it depends by your definition of "worse", the process of buying books and destroying them was considered "transformative" enough to be considered legal, while Anthropic later did piracy and kind of legally undermined the whole book scanning operation.
It's kinda poetic that in the entire process, authors get screwed thrice. First, by the publishers and retailers, who keep 80% of the revenue. Then, by the hacker culture that enables widespread, institutionalized book piracy for the sake of "information wanting to be free". And finally, by the same hacker culture gone corporate, where "grown-up" geeks conclude that, since we already have all these pirated works out there, what's the harm of training LLMs on that.<p>Music is quite similar, and I've actually seen piracy justified by saying that "eh, the musicians are screwed either way". And of course, that piracy enabled suno.ai, which is now making sure that the musicians are <i>really</i> screwed.
What are “Anna’s”?
What is Anna’s?
I never bought into Kindle because of this lockdown attitude. I buy audiobooks from audiobookstore and ebooks from google play books when lazy and itch and the other usual independent sites that sell drm free files when I'm not doing a jit in time purchase. I have a kindle I USB sideload or put files on sd card, because it has a physical keyboard.<p>But with the state of digital goods disrepect for the customer and locking us in mustache twirling reasons, I have better ways to spend my income. Yes I am not above reading shadow copies of books at times, but I'd rather kindle sell all titles as DRM free on rootable devices and their convenient storefront would be enough for me to direct my business there more.
I used to feel this way, but I reconsidered my threat model. You know what format is "locked in"? Physical books. Can only exist in one location at a time. If you loan it out, you can't read it until it's returned. Subject to theft, fire, rot, bugs or simply being lost.<p>There are aspects of Kindle I don't love--the constantly changing cover art for books I've purchased--but I've never run into an <i>actual</i> problem. I've got 2,500 books on my Kindle devices, and I can access them anywhere in the world at any time on my dedicated readers, my phone, my laptop (via Kindle Cloud Reader).<p>If DRM is the price I have to pay for a dead-simple ecosystem, multi-device support and free cloud storage, well, I guess I'm happy to pay it.
> If DRM is the price I have to pay for a dead-simple ecosystem, multi-device support and free cloud storage, well, I guess I'm happy to pay it.<p>That makes one of us. To each their own, I guess.
You can copy physical books for storage/otherwise personal use IIRC so it's not quite as locked down as a DRMd book. Not sure what the legal state of hand copying a book and then loaning it out as it probably doesn't come up much.
You can get pretty much the same thing from Amazon's competitors. With less burdensome DRM.
The Kindle isn't a bad device on its own. Personally I use a Kobo. But I never pay for any ebook that I can't keep indefinitely one way or another.<p>I also have an old Kindle 4 that needs to be jailbroken before the May 30th deadline. Maybe I'll do that today. Gets you out of the ecosystem. And old Kindles can be found pretty cheap.
When Amazon started locking it all down last year I bailed on their ecosystem for Kobo’s store, but I use a Boox device. As long as I can back it up in any format I’m happy, and as soon as Amazon crossed that line they lost my business.
I’m so happy I downloaded all my Kindle books when I still had a chance and then moved to the Kobo ecosystem, which albeit not perfect is much much better
I was kinda amazed to find out how hard it was to buy a kobo libra colour in .de -- apparently there's some kind of cartel thing going on where amazon somehow convince entire markets not to sell their competitors products. I had to order it from Hungary or something iirc.
Would you mind elaborating on the problems you have with the Kobo? I'm thinking of getting one of these once my kindle dies.
They're likely doing this because it's likely the only remaining loophole to their new DRM scheme. Too bad for them it's caused me to buy all my ebooks elsewhere.
I have my Kindle permanently in airplane mode to keep it away from Amazon's shenanigans and use Calibre to upload books to it, but if/when it breaks I have a feeling my next e-reader will be a Rakuten Kobo.
> The company has disclosed to Good e-Reader that Amazon is developing a new Kindle for PC app, but it will only be compatible with Windows 11.
FWIW, I'm quite disappointed that they didn't continue in the vein of the Windows 8 app which was touch friendly and worked quite nicely w/ a stylus.<p>I'm hoping that with the discontinuation of:<p><a href="https://read.amazon.com/kindle-notebook" rel="nofollow">https://read.amazon.com/kindle-notebook</a><p>that it will become possible to view Kindle Scribe notebooks in this new application as it is to view them in the Kindle App on Android (when it doesn't crash).
Everyday it's proven companies are their own worst enemy, from Blizzard to Amazon. Kobo should be paying Amazon for the free marketing.
I have a smattering of books on Kindle, mostly fiction/novels. But the vast majority of my book conllection consists of non-fiction/textbooks and I recently switched to Booklore on my NAS. I have over 900 textbooks and can access them anywhere via a WireGuard VPN. It's so slick!<p>Booklore seems great, but I'll admit there may be even better options. However this is the future of books for me. I'd like to start replacing more and more of my physical books with pdf/epub copies. It's been hard because there is nothing I love more than sitting down with a physical book. But this is definitely far more convenient.<p>I now want to start building up a research paper library in the same system.
There was some whole blowup with Booklore over it being vibecoded by a single maintainer recently. I think the project has changed ownership since then, but be cautious.<p>I use Calibre + Calibre Web. Definitely a bit old and clunky, but reliable.
Ditto for Calibre Web.
Clunky, but effective.<p>I wish there was a way to add books to a ‘shelf’ (a collection, which you can sync to a device) without having to open each book and add.
I want to go Select + Select + Select > Add > Sync.
It's funny that the top product recommendation on the website is the "Kobo Remote Control", which is the main thing that is making me think of going to Kobo once my Kindle Paperwhite is dead.<p>Amazon abandoning +14yo products, I don't care. I'm surprised they kept them alive that long. And they'll still work, just not with the store.<p>The DRM/Kindle for PC thing, I don't care. I'm perfectly aware that "buying" a digital good is actually a temporary license. I'm paying for the convenience, not to own "something". And since I've paid my fair share of "copie privée" tax, if I want to grab a persistent copy of an ebook I purchased on Amazon, I got it from the high seas.
These convenient and cheap book/game/video platforms sure killed piracy. Now that piracy's gone forever, we can enshittify the whole thing again! At least I imagine that's how it went in the meeting of 35 year-old corporate suits.
Imagine paying for ebooks in 2026 lmao
Good thing I'm discontinuing Kindle for me.