Feb 26 deadline from Amazon re downloading Kindle ebooks we bought

[UTUSN]

I don't understand whatever it means and how to "Download to computer". The issue seems to be not owning the Kindle things we bought. Does downloading mean taking up space on the laptop? Can thumbdrives be involved?

[hlthe2b]

1. Pretty unbelivable.

Yes. You need considerable space on your laptop, an external hard drive or a cloud account if you have a lot of books to download.

I have medical books--very detailed and enormous digital files that I have purchased so I am pissed royally.

[LuvLoogie]

3. Are a lot of that embeded media files?

I can see how a full color medical book could be a large file.

[hlthe2b]

4. Well, two volumes of Ettinger's Internal Medicine total 2, 448 pages... access to 750 online videos...

and more photos, charts, graphs, diagrams than I could count.

That's one of my digital texts I can access from my IPad...

I need to do more research on this Amazon move. I'm not convinced it is as serious as suggested or I would have heard a figurative "atomic bomb go off" among some of my big e-reader-using friends and colleagues. I don't care if I have to use Kindle to access it--I just don't want to lose all that $$$ along WITH access.

[LuvLoogie]

2. Ebook Kindle files don't take up that much space

You could probably fit close to 400 books into 1Gb of space.

For instance War and Peace is about 5 mb. You could fit 200 War and Peace sized ebooks in 1 gig.

[UTUSN]

5. Thank you.

[UTUSN]

6. "Three alternatives to Amazon/Kindle"

Last edited Fri Feb 21, 2025, 02:41 PM - Edit history (1)

HOW TO (Starts at 8:27 mark) :

[mike_c]

7. I won't use Kindle any longer.

I like real, printed and bound books. They never disappear from my book shelves unexpectedly.

[hunter]

8. I deleted my Amazon account entirely.

They're not getting any more of my money and I don't want Jeff Bezos reading over my shoulder, selling that information to anyone he pleases, or even using it internally within the company.

My kindle is going on the junk pile. I'll disassemble it and maybe use the e-ink screen to build some fun device, maybe a weather screen with an "Is he dead yet?" field.

Originally I got the kindle as a convenient way of subscribing to periodicals but they discontinued their newsstand service in March 2023 which made it much less useful to me.

I've always been wary of Amazon but as Trump pulls out all the regulatory stops that prevent corporations from becoming entirely evil, doing business with them actually endangers people.

[love_katz]

9. Bookmarking.

I want to cancel my Prime membership when it expires in May. I'm looking for alternatives to losing my Kindle books and my Amazon music purchases.

I saw that someone shared some videos on alternatives to Kindle. That's much appreciated.

If someone has any ideas on alternatives to saving my music purchases, I would really welcome the information.

F Bozo and his rip off company!

[UTUSN]

10. Am going to spend Saturday afternoon figuring out Calibre

[UTUSN]

11. More bad news: My purchases all are marked "not available for transfer"

Yrs, spent many hours of how-to YouTubes - downloading Calibre, trying to understand the plugins, the kindle actions - all for naught.

*** There was a vid saying the whole thing is much ado since the stuff can still be accessed on the kindle devices and that there are other outlets for acquiring things on other non-Amazon devices, and other device options such as Kobo, and staying titles on that device.

So maybe I'll just switch to mono and retain the kindle for the old things.

[UTUSN]

12. The last of it for me. Had a brief few minutes of success, then all hope dashed *finally*.

After browsing dozens of how-to YouTubes yesterday, thought from overnight that things to try were fairly clear for the morning, that 1- the two fixer plugins (DeDRM and KFX) for Calibre needed to be downloaded, 2- the books could be sent to Calibre where the two plugins would clean out the Amazon DRMs.

Then this morning came a couple of more hours of frustration with getting the Plugins installed in Calibre. The KFX was fairly easy. The DeDRM was something else, was on the point of surrender when finally there was validation that it had finally been installed. So, ON to the book downloads. First couple of tries, FAILs. Then the only encouraging development, TWO of the books made it through to success in Calibre!!!!!!!!!! That was enough to boost morale for another couple of hours of more frustration. No other tries were successful.

I had already cherry picked the total of Amazon books down to only a half dozen of indispensable ones. Only the TWO made it to Calibre. Dozens of "Help" sites and FAQ sites, mostly with highly tech crap. The one below was the most understandable, saying things like if a book download didn't succeed in Calibre it needed be deleted back to Amazon and re-downloaded, and something or other about something or other.

So. Back to Square 1, will look at the stuff I've got continuing on the Kindle, and will switch to a Kobo for new stuff.

HELP & FAQ: https://github.com/apprenticeharper/DeDRM_tools/blob/master/FAQs.md