Some DRM free bookstores and publishers
buttondown.com
Hi again, this short little thing is going to be a short email on places to buy DRM Free EBooks. Because Amazon has taken away the ability for people to...
  • shneancy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    3 days ago

    humble bundle at one point sold a bundle with the works of U K Le Guin, and since i’ve been meaning to read those, i bought it

    all were under amazon DRM

    i’m a big fan of being able to do whatever the hell i want with the things i buy so naturally, i got mad and looked for a way to un-DRM them, and i’m happy to say there’s a calibre plugin for that. i’m currently enjoying Wizard of Earthsea on my reMarkable

    • MisterFrog@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      This is what I’m planning to do with some textbooks I want for my work.

      $200-$300 and you want me to download an app that may or may not even work in 10 years?

      Nah, I’m gonna future proof my access no remorse 🏴‍☠️

      I will pay though, because it’s tax deductible, and also because it I ever get questioned on it (since I use them around coworkers and management), I’m golden.

  • orclev@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    4 days ago

    I recently switched to Kobo as a Kindle alternative, but that also highlighted a problem. Kindle Unlimited includes a TOS for publishers that prevents them from selling their books on any other platform. A significant chunk of the Kindle catalogue is also included in Kindle Unlimited, which means a significant chunk of authors works are locked into the Amazon ecosystem.

    It’s been very annoying to discover how many book series I’ve been reading that are simply unavailable elsewhere because they opted to take part in Kindle Unlimited.

    • bassomitron@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      4 days ago

      There’s a reason tons of major authors have come out against Amazon. I think Brandon Sanderson even went so far as to write books in secret and shadow drop them onto other book platforms, purposefully avoiding Amazon entirely. Also, Kindle Unlimited is an awful deal for authors, they get literal pennies for every reader.

      • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zipEnglish
        3·
        4 days ago

        To my knowledge, Sanderson has not spoken out against Kindle*. His kickstarter was mostly to advertise Dragonsteel which is likely going to become his own publishing house at some point.

        And while… fuck amazon, Kindle is a ridiculously author friendly platform to publish on and is the only reason we have so many amazing self published authors these days. And while KU is not great per book, it is an excellent way to get people interested in an author and buy their latest books. I strongly encourage actually reading what authors say instead of what users and armchair financial analysts do.

        *: I would be incredibly shocked if he did. I think he is definitely becoming more “woke” than “mormon” these days based off his writing and character details but he is still very much a business person

        • orclev@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          4 days ago

          Unfortunately Kindle Unlimited is a Faustian bargain due to the exclusivity clause. We’re now stuck in a catch 22. There are excellent (for consumers) alternatives out there to Kindle/Amazon, the most prominent of which is Kobo which has a variety of very competitive e-readers. Additionally Kobo Plus is essentially Kindle Unlimited, although I don’t know for sure whether it has an exclusivity clause (I hope it doesn’t, and the policies of Kobo make me suspect not, but I haven’t confirmed that). The biggest problem from a consumers perspective is simply that many authors works are just not available from the Kobo (or other) store.

          However the consumer perspective is only half the picture. From the perspective of an author/publisher Kindle is undeniably the largest platform out there with Kobo being one of their largest competitors (in terms of e-readers, I suspect in just ebooks Apple is bigger) and it’s minuscule compared to Kindle. While functionally the Kobo store and Kobo Plus give everything that the Kindle store and Kindle Unlimited do, what they are severely lacking in is customers. An author could choose to publish on Kindle and Kobo as well as make their books available on Kobo Plus, but doing so means foregoing the option of Kindle Unlimited which will result in fewer consumers having access to that authors works at least in the short term.

          So we arrive at the catch 22. Consumers get a much better deal with Kobo, but lose access to many of the authors works they may want to read. Authors need to stick with Kindle and Kindle Unlimited if they want to reach as many consumers as they can, but doing so discourages consumers from switching to Kindle/Kindle Unlimited alternatives like Kobo/Kobo Plus. Until enough consumers move off Kindle Unlimited authors won’t want to abandon it, but until enough authors abandon it consumers will struggle to move off of Kindle Unlimited.

    • Bieren@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      4 days ago

      This has been my issue as well.

      And when you sail the high seas to liberate books. You might get the actually book, without issues. You might get a file named your book, that has 17 pages of that book and then the rest is a manual to fix a car.

      • bob_lemon@feddit.orgEnglish
        4·
        4 days ago

        There’s an archive of books belonging to a certain anna, which has not failed me yet.

        • Zirconium@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          4 days ago

          Me too brother. For some reason There’s a lot of american classics that don’t have a good scan on archive (totally forgot about project gutenberg) but Anna has served so well

    • sigmaklimgrindset@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      0·
      4 days ago

      Related question: are Kindle Unlimited books digital only? Can you not buy physical copies of it?

      Ngl I still buy physical books, and I use my ereader to check out ebooks from the library and/or sail the high seas, so I have no idea what’s going on in the ebook ecosystems.

      • orclev@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        4 days ago

        Sort of? Kindle Unlimited itself is digital only, but the exclusivity clause only applies to ebooks I think, so in theory you could purchase a physical copy elsewhere.

        I’ve pretty much entirely abandoned physical books. It’s just far more convenient using an e-reader which has a backlight for reading in the dark, fits thousands of books in a device that’s pocket sized, and let’s me instantly purchase, download, and start reading the next book in a series as soon as I finish the last one.

        I do have physical books still, but I haven’t bought new ones in about a decade now.

    • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zipEnglish
      0·
      4 days ago

      I strongly encourage POLITELY reaching out to your favorite authors on social media to talk to them about this.

      One of my favorite guilty pleasure reads is very open that this is why his ebooks are only on kindle. But he is also looking into alternatives (especially since he is now big enough to have at least a small publisher) because the readers he is trying to help with KU are the ones asking him to get away from it.

      Not going to tear down my de-drm setup any time soon. But optimistic I might be able to before amazon does it for me.

      • orclev@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        4 days ago

        Not going to tear down my de-drm setup any time soon. But optimistic I might be able to before amazon does it for me.

        As far as I’m aware it’s now too late for that. Amazon has removed the ability to download ebooks to your computer meaning the only way to access azw files now is if you’ve found a way to rip them out of the Kindle memory (not possible using normal means, but maybe if you’ve cracked one open and probed the flash memory directly).

        I used to de-drm all my kindle purchases using the manual download links Amazon had, but those have now been removed. That’s actually what prompted me to switch to Kobo. I’m not going to “purchase” a book I can’t create a backup of.

        • uzay@infosec.pubEnglish
          0·
          4 days ago

          If you own a kindle reader you can just connect it via usb and dedrm the kfx files.

          • orclev@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            4 days ago

            No you can’t. They changed the firmware so eBook downloads now go into a partition that’s not accessible when mounting the kindle over USB.

  • jaark@infosec.pubEnglish
    2·
    3 days ago

    There seems to be a few publishers missing here …

    Baen typically sells their wares directly but TOR are through the usual sellers but have no DRM. I’m not sure how this works in practise with Amazon’s new “you can’t get the files” policy, but they are probably in cleartext somewhere.

    • trolololol@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      3 days ago

      Many star trek novels don’t do DRM. I buy them at Kobo, so I’m also skipping American middle man.

  • Zink@programming.devEnglish
    1·
    3 days ago

    My wife likes her kindle hardware.

    I love stumbling upon EPUBs and using Amazon’s website to send them to her kindle.

  • bpev@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    4 days ago

    Anyone got store recs for non-english books? Or that mostly just gonna vary a ton by language?

  • RedstoneValley@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    4 days ago

    Is there any way to liberate existing ebooks now that Amazon has pulled the plug on downloading? An unfortunate friend of mine has “bought" Books from Amazon for thousands of euros and he just now finds out that he doesn’t seem to own them. I’d help him free his books if there is a possibility.

    • zarenki@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      4 days ago

      If you have a rooted Android device or a jailbroken Kindle device, yes, you can still use Calibre DeDRM and KFX Input plugins on the kindle ebooks downloaded on them. It just takes a bit more setup with getting the key you need.

      • dan@upvote.auEnglish
        2·
        4 days ago

        And ideally your search engine of choice would be z-library or libgen

    • doodledup@lemmy.worldEnglish
      03·
      4 days ago

      This is the answer to everything ain’t it? You probably neve purchased a book in your life and just came here proudly to say this.

      • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        4 days ago

        I purchase physical books, but I’d be fucking daft to purchase a REVOKABLE LICENSE to a book. That said, I have SO MANY digital books that I obtained for free.

        • doodledup@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          3 days ago

          You can buy the ebooks from Kobo or the like and strip out the DRM using Calibre.

          Shitte practices by Amazon are no justification to let it all out on the authors. Amazon literally doesn’t care whatsoever if you don’t buy a book there. However, the author might need to feed their family dry bread today.

          • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            1·
            3 days ago

            Fuck that

            Why would I go through extra effort

            I can just get them and not do all that shit

            I’ll buy a book I can hold

        • doodledup@lemmy.worldEnglish
          12·
          3 days ago

          You people are delusional to not understand that intellectual property is the fundamental basis of our world economy, and also your job. Elliminate all IP you’ll get an iPhone that’s priced at $20. What is your recommendation for a communistic society where nobody will get rewarded for creativity and ingeneuity? How would that work exactly? I’m listening.