Amazon Kindle and Book Downloads

Some people are saying “Rush to download your Kindle Books because after the 26th of February you won’t be able to. My reaction is both neutral and to some degree indifferent. For me Amazon is destroying the reason for which people would buy from Kindle rather than other book sellers, but more to the point why people would pay the same price for an e-book as for a printed book.

When I buy books from Kindle I choose the cheapest I can find for two reasons. The first is that I like the act of buying books but the second reason is that it’s DRMed and when Amazon goes bankrupt our book collections will cease to be.

I would go even further. If I browse kindle, and I like to get books, then it makes sense to use Kindle Unlimited rather than buying individual books. With Kindle Unlimited I pay 9.99 per month and I have access to twelve books simultaneously. That’s 12 times 10 CHF if we count that each book is 10 Francs. This means that instead of spending 120 CHF on books I spend 9.99.

By telling people “You don’t own your e-books” Amazon is undercutting its own market. Kobo, Payot, Buchhaus and other book companies give you more freedom to buy, download and upload to the e-reader of your choice. By blocking people from doing this Amazon are removing our reason for buying Kindle books. They’re not protecting their market, they’re encouraging people to migrate to another platform.

They also encourage people to pirate their content, and by pirate I mean find tools to strip the DRM from books people own, and to find ways to surreptitiously download the books they own.

A year or two ago I considered using an MP3 player rather than a mobile phone to listen to audiobooks but when I found that DRM blocked me from doing so directly I did some research on how to legally strip the DRM from the books I owned to play them on a device I owned that was not compatible with Audible natively. I would never have done this if I had not been pushed to.

It’s by blocking me from accessing content I owned that Amazon got me to learn about tools to legally strip DRM from my own audio books, and then make them available for my own personal use via Audiobookshelf via Tailscale. I am not encouraging piracy. I want to be clear about that. I like Audible despite hating Amazon and the monopoly it has on e-books. I wanted to back up my books in case audiobooks are ever blocked for any reason.

Amazon, via what it is doing with Kindle books is proving that I was right to do what I did, when I did it.

And There is More

Years ago I could buy Kindle books, but only via Kindle Germany, not Kindle France. This means that I had to use the crappy German interface rather than a French one. When I tried to migrate from Kindle Germany to Kindle France I was blocked from accessing my books, so I had to undo the move.

When I contacted Amazon the chaos monkeys that work for them couldn’t understand that I wanted to access my Kindle Germany books via Kindle France, which, within the European Union should be seamless.

The result is that I have two amazon accounts, one for Kindle Germany, and one for Kindle France. My book collections are across two libraries because Amazon is too stupid to make switching between countries fluid without losing access to our books.

Leased, Not Owned

Years ago I owned my copy of Adobe Premiere, so I could use it when I needed it and leave it dormant when I didn’t. Now, with the monthly cost to use I stopped using their products. Adobe, because we no longer own their products, became irrelevant. For 300 CHF I have Final Cut Pro XI. For free as long as it is just HD I have DaVinci Resolve and KDEnlive. Amazon Kindle and Adobe are making the same mistakes

And Finally

Nexus costs 30 CHF to buy as a physical book from Payot, and Amazon as a book, and as a Kindle book. If I have to pay 30 CHF for a book that I can’t download and move from device to device then I will go to the competition.

In theory by restricting Kindle books to Kindle devices they force us to change Kindle devices every so often. In reality kindle devices last for years, so we would spend 100 CHF on a new kindle every few years, and just ten francs per month, rather than 20-50 CHF per month if we love buying books.

The day Audible blocks me from downloading and stripping the DRM from books I bought and paid for is the day I stop being a customer. Remember, I used Audible for years before I learned how to keep private DRM free copies of my books. It’s because of their DRM policies that I had to find a workaround.

Buying Kindle books, and devices is less interesting than ever.