Comment by chmod775
3 months ago
For books only available through Amazon my workflow used to be buying it, downloading it with their desktop app, importing into Calibre, converting to epub and stripping DRM, then pushing it onto my Kobo.
They broke that a while ago by making their DRM even worse, so now I just pirate those books.
While Amazon does some shady stuff, at least _some_ of the blame here belongs on the big publishing companies.
One of the big publishers put heavy pressure on Amazon to patch this exploit or else they would pull all their content from the platform (or so I was told).
(I worked at Kindle 2017-2019, and was on the team that wrote the code that OP reversed engineered)
Amazon has exercised substantial market power to get publishers to do what they want. If they really wanted to, they could have pushed back just like they have in other areas.
No.
For one thing, DRM also works in Amazon's favour (reselling multiple copies)
For another, DRM is a pretty big sticking point for copyright holders, music, text, whatever. It's the one big thing that publishers all think that their business model depends on
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Books have got to be the least expensive form of entertainment out there. The value to cost ratio is incredible. Consider buying books to support authors and publishers. If you can't afford it, then libraries are nice too.
I personally know people who pirate books, but pay hundreds of dollars a year for streaming services or battle pass type video games. It blows my mind. Books are so cheap people!
I recently bought the complete Storm Archives series by Brandon Sanderson on ebook for $10. That's over 100 hours of entertainment. It's literally a ratio of 10 CENTS per hour of entertainment.
I have more than 100 books that I bought with actual money on Apple's iBooks (or whatever it was called back in 2010-2012). I no longer use an iPad and would like to be able to read them on my Kindle. Because of DRM, I can't. I'm all for supporting authors and the various editors, etc., but I feel like I've already done that in this case.
I don't see much of an ethical problem with downloading a pirated version of an ebook that you already paid for but can no longer access. If I did that, I'd have no problem sleeping at night.
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Yes, there should have been a law that required interoperable DRM.
At least you can transfer movies around different services. It’s a shame you can’t with books.
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It should be put into law, that when you buy something, you have the right to do with it what you want for personal use.
In the present case, Amazon clearly states that the customer is buying a book, so it should work the same way as buying a physical book.
One solution would be to buy a DRM free digital version.
The stormlight archive isn't a representative example because:
- Brandon Sanderson's books are actually relatively inexpensive, despite their popularity
- Brandon sanderson ebooks are available without DRM. Interestingly, this is actually more common for fantasy and SF than other genres.
Other books are more expensive and more likely to be locked behind DRM for digital books.
> Interestingly, this is actually more common for fantasy and SF than other genres.
Because it's a Tor policy? Brandon Sanderson's ebooks are DRM-free because his publisher is Tor.
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> I personally know people who pirate books, but pay hundreds of dollars a year for streaming services or battle pass type video games. It blows my mind. Books are so cheap people!
What is your definition of “cheap” and how many books do you consume compared to movies and TV shows on streaming services? You also haven’t stated which categories of books are cheap and are better value for you. Others may not have an interest in Storm Archives or something that’s interesting to you. There may be people interested in reading a lot of nonfiction alongside some fiction. Individual interests vary a lot.
Someone using only one streaming service may probably be getting thousands of hours of entertainment over one year.
Such comparisons also don’t account for regional price variations and availability.
The post you are replying to implies that they buy books with the exception of books that are only available on Kindle.
I, too, do not buy ebooks that I cannot strip the DRM from. I would face a dilemma were I to have need of a book that I cannot get as either a physical copy or a DRM-free electronic copy, but I have not faced that situation yet.
I have spent over $2000 this year on books.
If you read GP's post closely, they're saying that the value to cost ratio is 0 due to Amazon's new DRM. Did you mean to reply to some other thread?
I'm more than happy to pay for DRM free epubs. I won't pay for a crippled rental of a book that only works on amazon or adobe blessed devices and can be confiscated on the whim of a corporation who won't be answerable for it.
>I personally know people who pirate books, but pay hundreds of dollars a year for streaming services or battle pass type video games. It blows my mind. Books are so cheap people!
I've been downloading every book whose title I see mentioned anywhere. I've got the last 20 years or so of the NYT Book Review Notable Books (100 per calendar year), the Book of the Month Club list, etc. Why go to the library, when I can have one of my own?
The issue wasn't with the price so no amount of talking about how the price is great will make a dent in the issue.
The library ebook lending solutions tend not to avoid the DRM problem either.
> Books have got to be the least expensive form of entertainment out there. The value to cost ratio is incredible.
Hard disagree, lot of video game will give you a better hours of entertainment per dollars ratio.
Lot of sport will do the same, as will board games and roleplaying games. Lot of hobbies are cheaper than books.
The issue is that you usually aren't buying the ebook. You are buying a license to access that ebook and they can revoke that license at any time. Maybe you're okay with that, but many people want to permanently have access to the things they purchased.
Buying a license if you’re pirating, supports the authors while potentially offering you legal protection on the cheap.
If at all possible, find a local independent book store and buy from there. If they don't have it in stock, often they'll order it for you.
I have one that's been around since I was a kid, and I love taking the family there. Everybody picks a book, and it might cost anywhere from $80-120 (I've got a good sized family), but these days that's about what it would cost to go to a movie. And since you have a physical book, you can swap when you're done.
We also started celebrating Jolabokaflod a few years back, which is an Icelandic post-war tradition of giving books as gifts on Christmas Eve and reading them. This is a lot of fun, and it's a great excuse to hit the book store.
Also consider buying through Bookshop.org. You designate your local book store as the one that will receive the profit from the purchase, but you get to shop through Bookshop.org's full catalog. If you don't designate a book store, the profit is distributed among participating book stores.
How much of a cut does a place like Amazon take from the purchase while providing negative value to the product? Everyone (except Amazon) would be better off if you pirated the book and mailed a check to the author for half the cost or whatever
Videogames could give them a run for their money, I guess, but only certain genres.
Most genres really.
Even a 60 euros for a 6 hour experience comes at 10 euro per hour, cheaper than music and on par with movies.
Add replayability, multiplayer, longer games, cheaper games, ... and many many games are under 1 euro per hour, sometimes far under. Even someone playing fifa or call of duty has a price to hour ratio thats absurdly good.
And the range available is insane, used to be if you liked some genre you had maybe a game once every two years, now there are so many that not only you can't play all your games, even a seasonned gigantic fan of gaming cannot know all good games released anymore.
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Vampire Survivors ^^^
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> Consider buying books to support authors and publishers.
Consider that maybe buying Amazon Kindle books is giving more support to DRM schemes like the one described in the article than it is to authors and publishers.
I personally know people who pirate books, but pay hundreds of dollars a year for streaming services or battle pass type video games. It blows my mind. Books are so cheap people!
Games that sell a battlepass or have ongoing MTX are an minority of the video games available.
There are plenty of games available that are priced similarly to books and there really isn't a question as far as which will provide more entertainment.
For instance, I recently purchased the Mass Effect series for $6. I should be able to easily get 100+ hours out of that set of games.
I often buy a hard copy and then find an ebook online or check it out from the library on Libby. I’m all for supporting authors, but I don’t want to funnel money into books that I don’t really own.
> I personally know people who pirate books, but pay hundreds of dollars a year for streaming services or battle pass type video games. It blows my mind.
I personally know people that pirate everything and PAY FOR PIRATING SERVICES. This blows my mind even more! I know that globally it's probably still cheaper to pay for those services rather than paying for 4 different streaming services each month, but god, if I go pirate than I would go for 0$/month expenses.
It isn't about the price. The level of service and the quality of the product you get by pirating is simply better. Streaming services break up shows and have s1-3 on one platform, 4-5 on another, and the rest on another still. You'll "buy" a movie on amazon prime video only for them to remove it so you can't watch it anymore. Prime video, a service you have to pay for now has ad breaks while watching shows. Even just FINDING stuff to watch is a nightmare, Netflix is the same stuff over and over again in different random made up categories.
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They pay _for service_ of just press play and view
I buy a lot of books from used book stores. Fundamentally I'm only paying for the paper it's printed on as none of those fat proceeds($3.99 paperback) ever reach the publisher. Totally cool and legal.
When I'm following a new book that's coming out, I'll drop the $30 on the unnecessarily large hardcover with the thick paper that fluffs it up.
I have only ever purchased one eBook though, and it was an awful experience. I had to crack the DRM so I could read it on the same app I read all my other books on.
When I buy a physical book, I can put it on my shelf and share it with anyone I want. I can't do that with an ebook. And if I can't comfortably read the oversized print copy, I'm going to just go find a copy online.
I basically refuse to buy physical modern fiction due to the publishing industry making every physical copy as large as possible. I have old mass-market paperbacks that have twice the density per page, thinner pages, and overall more portable than the massive soft-covers with giant print that they sell today. They're just uncomfortable to read. I took a copy of "Death's End" and a copy of "Thinking in Jazz" by Paul F Berliner. From the outside, the two books have nearly the same dimensions. The latter weighs almost twice as much, has nearly 300 more pages, and the page density is nearly a third tighter. Why should both these books take up the same amount of space on my shelf? Why do publishers think they're so important as to take up two seats on the plane? Bring back smaller mass market formfactors ffs and I'll pay full price for their bullshit.
Publishing companies are making their products worse and worse to consume. As Gabe Newel says, it's a distribution problem.
If you're going to just borrow it from a library, then why not just pirate it? The author/publisher isn't getting paid in either case, and libraries are 1000x less convenient than pirating.
The authors and publishers are getting paid by the library for the physical book borrowed, which endures wear and tear and must ultimately be replaced. Not sure how licensing for digital books work with libraries - all the library systems I've used have a cap on the number of digital books that can be lent out.
i'm gonna argue that video games can be better cost to value ratio.
> so now I just pirate those books.
I know someone who wrote a (technical) book and how hard it is to get sales in the age of easy internet piracy.
I understand the desire to use the books as you please, but please remember that buying the book and downloading a pirated copy for your own use are not mutually exclusive choices.
You can still purchase the book to support the author even if you're not using the exact same file to read it. As the other commenter said, books are extremely cheap relative to the value and/or entertainment time they provide.
I'd rather donate money directly to the author. I will not under any circumstance still reward Amazon for what they're doing.
You could support your local bookstore. Bookstores are closing down all over the world. Most authors do not support a way to pay them directly. For example, traditionally published authors have all of their royalties handled via their agents. For a non-trivial amount of sales, direct donation would be an accounting headache for individual writers.
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You would never do that, and nobody is falling for it.
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Publishing is a dying industry. It use to be that publishers had limited press capacity, so if wanted to print and sell your book you needed a publisher to handle the production and distribution. Now it’s electronic. What value is a publisher bringing?
There was a time I could go to Borders, Barnes and Noble, Crown Books, and a couple of independent bookstores. Now I can go to Barnes and Noble and the remaining independent store.
Seems like there should be some sort of new coop structure where a writer can engage with editors, graphics people, and marketers on a fee for service or sales percentage basis. Without the agent/publisher gatekeepers.
Editors are expensive, DRM and copyright is a lot of work. AI is not a good editor yet text come out too bland.
that's so weird. First I decide to buy my wife an ebook reader for the new years and then Louis Rossman makes a video on Kindle DRM bait and switch. Now this and people praising Kobo. Guess I'm buying a kobo
Most Kobo books have DRM. There are a few publishers (TOR) and authors that are DRM free, but most of books I've wanted have it.
This is why I have a Boox Android eInk tablet, although I only use it with burner accounts. They run Ancient versions of Android.
True, but that DRM is relatively easy to handle, and is sort-of a standard (OK, I know Adobe handles it, but it's not a complete walled garden like Kindle). I can borrow an ebook from my library using my browser, download the DRM'ed file, fulfil it (using Adobe Digital Editions), copy to my ereader. I can buy books from Google and do the same. It's relatively straight forward to strip the DRM if you want to. Because it is reliant on a third-party service (Adobe) that has other clients/interests, it's not as likely to change as quickly or as onerously as Kindle's DRM.
Yes, most books you buy from Kobo do have DRM, but a Kobo handles DRM-free files you may acquire elsewhere (e.g. an author or publisher's site) better than Kindles do. Kobos support epub natively, while Kindle requires some sort of conversion that doesn't always work great.
This, my first eink reader was a Meebook M6, Boox didn't release their 6" model yet. My main selection criteria was "it runs android". It was a really good reader, Kobo, Kindle and co can just be ewaste as they're designed to be.
Kobo fully supports pointing your library at a Calibre server instance to pull books from. You can also access a bash shell by changing a setting. They're very open devices and IMO quite nice.
Kobo's pretty good. Anything to avoid Kindle books.
I bought one, but it didn't have any of the books I wanted. It seems to be nowhere near as comprehensive as the Kindle library.
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It's a little less user friendly but I really like my Boox tablet because it's a full android device.
I run Storyteller app on it and have my ebooks & audiobooks synced up perfectly like whispersync but better.
+1 for Storyteller. It is beyond fantastic to have my progress seamlessly synced between my ebooks and audiobooks.
I’m paying for BookFusion, to have synced cross-platform reading. It’s expensive, but seems to be one of the few cross-platform synced readers that supports the EPUB Media Overlays from Storyteller.
Have you experienced ghosting with your Boox tablet? I’d like to get one, but I know that ghosting would bother me.
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Calibre handles kindle too (if you already have that). You "obtain" the books one way or another, and calibre converts them to a proper format and copies them directly to your kindle (via the usb cable).
Pirated books have no DRM, usually come in an open .epub format, which can be converted to whatever your reader requires, and you end up actually owning them, even if amazon decides to abandon the kindle ecosystem.
Bookshop.org is supposed to implement Kobo support sometime this year, getting a Kobo if that happens.
What does 'Kobo support' mean? Anyone can publish an epub, which a Kobo can read. Are you talking integration into the Kobo store?
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I liked the idea of Bookshop.org but I was surprised when I ordered something from it, it shipped from somewhere 2,000 miles away from me. I had the misunderstanding it was going to ship from a local bookshop that was actually local to me.
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Eventually those physical book scanning cameras are going to be used to read/scan DRM locked ebooks.
There has been a 50% proof of concept, 50% art project by an Austrian university professor to a similar extent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIY_Kindle_Scanner
https://vimeo.com/73675285
You could still use an older version of the app to force getting a book with the older DRM.
I haven't done that in a while though, so I'm not sure if they closed that loophole.
Unfortunately they did close that loophole recently. :(
Ah that’s a shame. Amazon is unfortunately one of the most comprehensive ebook catalogues I have found.
Some books are available to buy DRM-free if you search a little - sometimes from the publisher or the Kobo store. It's also just possible to buy a book and also download a pirated copy. You're not just hurting Amazon, you're hurting the author and I don't think we want to encourage a world where no one writes books because its impossible to get paid for them.
You may not like a product or service, or think it's too expensive, but that doesn't ethically justify just getting it for free illegally. It does justify abstinence: simply not buying the product or service, while also not illegally obtaining it otherwise.
How recently did they break that? Did they break it only for new titles?
Because I did that on two books maybe 1-2 weeks ago without issue. I might be on an old version of the desktop app.
Edit: apparently it's for titles April 2025 or later
I feel your pain, As an author even I detest DRM and the lack of ability to move between ecosystems, best way is to start out on the right foot and ensure you get all your books, DRM free, and download them locally.
There are also plenty of good free books from indie authors like me (www.rodyne.com) that don't make it to Amazon. I also normally check out smashwords (www.smashwords.com) for their free books or sales, and download about 30 books - about 5 are usually worth keeping, which is about in line with Kindle books I pay for. Also worth signing up for your local library for the best-sellers, they often have partnerships to allow you to loan ebooks.
Followed the same path.
At least Steve Jobs understood how DRM should work.