Amazon has removed Download & Transfer option

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by ratinox

This is predicated on e-ink Kindles being the bulk of Amazon's ebook sales. What I know says that this hasn't been the case for years, with phones and tablets steadily eroding that dominance. Saw the same thing with iPod being eroded by iPhone and other mobile phones. It's very possible that Amazon have reached and passed "Peak Kindle". if this is the case then the smart thing is to wind down Kindle and focus on where the profits are.

Because at the end of the day, it isn't enough for a product line to be profitable. It needs to be profitable enough to warrant continued investment.

one thing to take in to consideration is buying purchases of users based on their chosen device. Like, you could have a situation where more people use the kindle app on their phone or tablet, but people with actual kindle devices buy more books on average.

Originally Posted by Jedi425

It does this sometimes, I mentioned it later on the GitHub; I suspect it's on Amazon's end. Wait a few and try again, I've yet to have it not work the second time. Then again, maybe they already changed how it works again.

Yeah, I am having it consistently fail for me. I think it is because it is wanting me to solve a captcha (if I use --showbrowser, I will see a captcha on screen for a few seconds before crashing)

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Sometimes I do read on my iPhone. But I mostly read on my Libra 2.

I'm the same way, as are most people I know. Hardcore ebook users typically have an eink reader.

Originally Posted by ratinox

Plus the huge (and growing) swath of webcomics from Asia which are formatted specifically for reading on phones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webtoon

Webcomics are a whole different beast, especially since many are frequently updated, and not released all in one go.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Hellmark

one thing to take in to consideration is buying purchases of users based on their chosen device. Like, you could have a situation where more people use the kindle app on their phone or tablet, but people with actual kindle devices buy more books on average.

There are also people with eink that buy few books and people using apps buying many. What you write was true years ago.

Originally Posted by Hellmark

I'm the same way, as are most people I know. Hardcore ebook users typically have an eink reader.

I know some that don't and don't want one even after trying it. Apple has a book store and has no eink model.

[deleted_account23]

Enough people want ebooks on an e-ink device (that would not buy them for use on tablet) that Amazon (and others) will continue to manufacture them for the foreseeable future IMO.

There are a few books I prefer to use on tablet (photography ones and chess ones) as the photos and diagrams show up better. But for all novels etc I find e-ink much easier on eyes. I think there are enough people who think similarly that they will continue to be produced



I actually prefer my Kobo to my old Kindle and I can't see Kobo going anywhere. In fact if Kindle stopped making e-ink, Kobo would reap benefits

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Inquisitive_Ram

In fact if Kindle stopped making e-ink, Kobo would reap benefits

But it would be bad for innovation; Kobo would have no motivation to try as hard as now, when they're competing with Amazon.

[deleted_account23]

There are other makers too though. It wouldn't just be Kobo looking to grab the market share. Nook would try, others would etc

But I just think in any case that Amazon will stay in the e-ink market. They've just added some new models. This suggests to me they are focussed on the ebook market

[rantanplan]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

But it would be bad for innovation; Kobo would have no motivation to try as hard as now, when they're competing with Amazon.

I think you got it backwards. Kobo innovated, because Boox and other makers created the Note and colour devices. Amazon was super late to the party.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by rantanplan

I think you got it backwards. Kobo innovated, because Boox and other makers created the Note and colour devices. Amazon was super late to the party.

Yes, but they may have been motivated by the knowledge that they were ahead of Amazon in this. Of course that's speculation on my part.

Anyway, more competition is always better for customers.

[Quoth]

Nook is Barnes & Nobles' ereader and they are not very committed to ebooks. Used to be in UK and now only North America or USA? They are a USA bricks & Mortar bookshop. Owned by a "hedge company" that also owns a UK chain.

Onyx Boox is a small Chinese company and the advantage & disadvantage is that they use Android. Expensive and the larger Color model twice the price of a Nxtpaper 14.

Then reMarkable is almost a one trick pony, small Norwegian company more focused on PDFs and notes. Terrible to interface. No Calibre support. The reMarkable 2 is hardly different to the original remarkable (last time I looked they ran same FW revision) and like a poor clone of a Sony DPT model. Inferior to Kobo Elipsa. They now have a colour model (probably Gallery 3).

Bigme is a tiny Chinese company big on hype and failed product development.

Pocketbook are not bad, a small Swiss - Ukrainian company.

Kobo (and Tolino) are owned by pretty large Japanese Rakuten, who also makes TVs and the Viber Chat app. They used to own Overdrive but sold it. Sony transferred their bookshop customers to Kobo when they got out of ereaders (The DPT range was never marketed as an ereader).


We are ten years past peak eBook based on eink. The only significant change on Kindles since the Voyage / Paperwhite 3 (10 years ago) / Oasis 1 (all 300 dpi 6" screens) for people reading reflowable novels, the most common ebook, is a 7" screen. The Scribe and Colorsoft are more niche models and the Scribe is a failure for business or off line use because the PDF has to be sent to Amazon and then the resultant proprietary annotated KFX has to tb send to Amazon to get the annotations. The Elipsa can do that all off-line, including writing to text in notebooks, though not on PDFs. The full Nebo package on iOS or Android (Kobo has to use a cut down version due to eink) does to realtime text preview of handwriting and PDF import/annotation handwriting to text/export ALL OFFLINE!.

There used to be iRiver (made mp3 players before Apple) and Sony as well as various smaller companies. Mirasol came and went on one HW for two Chinese bookshops. Not sure if Binatone only did LCD models.

There are loads of obsolete tech Chinese models from tiny companies.

Really Kobo is best and for some different features the Pocket book non-Android and the Onyx Boox Android. Neither reMarkable or Bigme or any of the random Chinese makes are worth considering for reading novels.

The Nxtpaper 2.0 or 3.0 and similar from others on OLED and LCD are now far better than Kaleido for colour and can equal eink with a front light needed. Battery life is now 15 to 30 hours (depending on model reading a novel (with or without music and can play unrelated music). That long life and no glare, no headaches, some 4:3 and 3:2 aspect models etc means that eink has only an advantage for 5" (why are there none?) to 8" sizes for reflowable novels in ambient light good enough for no frontlight.

[rantanplan]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Kobo (and Tolino) are owned by pretty large Japanese Rakuten, who also makes TVs and the Viber Chat app.

It makes sense for Tolino to follow Kobo / Rakuten since Tolino is a distribution company, and they outsource the hardware and software manufacturing to Kobo.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by rantanplan

I think you got it backwards. Kobo innovated, because Boox and other makers created the Note and colour devices. Amazon was super late to the party.

Onyx Boox, Bigme, reMarkable all chased niche Markets. Neither Kobo nor Amazon copied them.

Most likely the issue is what do you put in a new model once you have 32G Flash, decent frontlight, 300 dpi etc. You add note taking. Amazon was late to that.
Then what do you do? Note taking on smaller models (The Libra 2 mysterious had the stylus support, but only the usual sketch pad).

Then maybe eInk Corp says: You want something for a new model? Or Kobo asks them, and they decide to do Kaleido. Tech that's been possible for 15 years. Maybe the price is reduced.
So Amazon does a walled garden note taking model with weirdly different SW, leveraging their KFX and gets a temporary exclusive on 300 dpi 10" plus size.
Then they also add the Kaleido 3 (which is no innovation).

I don't see that Kobo has been copying anyone else, but Amazon has certainly been trying to copy and out do Kobo on the lastest PW, Scribe and Colorsoft.

Note that none of them have their own ereader factories and the most expensive part is the single source eink panel. You can buy a decent Android phone or tablet for less than the price of a replacement eink panel for current models, though no doubt the there is a good bulk discount. Look at Amazon Fire models (and those probably have a better margin!).

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by rantanplan

It makes sense for Tolino to follow Kobo / Rakuten since Tolino is a distribution company, and they outsource the hardware and software manufacturing to Kobo.

Kobo probably develop the software, though Tolino would have been a separate team originally. Not sure how much the HW is designed by them, but Kobo don't manufacture at all. Rakuten bought aspects of Tolino from the German ebook distribution owners. I'm sceptical that the two SW versions will continue much longer now that Kobo and Tolino are on the same HW.

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Nook is Barnes & Nobles' ereader and they are not very committed to ebooks. Used to be in UK and now only North America or USA? They are a USA bricks & Mortar bookshop. Owned by a "hedge company" that also owns a UK chain.

Onyx Boox is a small Chinese company and the advantage & disadvantage is that they use Android. Expensive and the larger Color model twice the price of a Nxtpaper 14.

Then reMarkable is almost a one trick pony, small Norwegian or Scandinavian company more focused on PDFs and notes. Terrible to interface. No Calibre support. The reMarkable 2 is hardly different to the original remarkable (last time I looked they ran same FW revision) and like a poor clone of a Sony DPT model. Inferior to Kobo Elipsa. They now have a colour model (Kaleido 3).

Bigme is a tiny Chinese company big on hype and failed product development.

Pocketbook are not bad, a small Swiss - Ukrainian company.

Kobo (and Tolino) are owned by pretty large Japanese Rakuten, who also makes TVs and the Viber Chat app. They used to own Overdrive but sold it. Sony transferred their bookshop customers to Kobo when they got out of ereaders (The DPT range was never marketed as an ereader).


We are ten years past peak eBook based on eink. The only significant change on Kindles since the Voyage / Paperwhite 3 (10 years ago) / Oasis 1 (all 300 dpi 6" screens) for people reading reflowable novels, the most common ebook, is a 7" screen. The Scribe and Colorsoft are more niche models and the Scribe is a failure for business or off line use because the PDF has to be sent to Amazon and then the resultant proprietary annotated KFX has to tb send to Amazon to get the annotations. The Elipsa can do that all off-line, including writing to text in notebooks, though not on PDFs. The full Nebo package on iOS or Android (Kobo has to use a cut down version due to eink) does to realtime text preview of handwriting and PDF import/annotation handwriting to text/export ALL OFFLINE!.

There used to be iRiver (made mp3 players before Apple) and Sony as well as various smaller companies. Mirasol came and went on one HW for two Chinese bookshops. Not sure if Binatone only did LCD models.

There are loads of obsolete tech Chinese models from tiny companies.

Really Kobo is best and for some different features the Pocket book non-Android and the Onyx Boox Android. Neither reMarkable or Bigme or any of the random Chinese makes are worth considering for reading novels.

The Nxtpaper 2.0 or 3.0 and similar from others on OLED and LCD are now far better than Kaleido for colour and can equal eink with a front light needed. Battery life is now 15 to 30 hours (depending on model reading a novel (with or without music and can play unrelated music). That long life and no glare, no headaches, some 4:3 and 3:2 aspect models etc means that eink has only an advantage for 5" (why are there none?) to 8" sizes for reflowable novels in ambient light good enough for no frontlight.

The Remarkable Paper Pro doesn't use Kaleido 3. It uses E-Ink Gallery 3 which is part of why it's so expensive.

Barnes & Noble and Nook's are U.S. only. Not a thing in Canada.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

The Remarkable Paper Pro doesn't use Kaleido 3. It uses E-Ink Gallery 3 which is part of why it's so expensive.

And makes it more use as a small poster display than an ereader. At least Kaleido can be as fast as a mono eink doing grey tones. In theory, because the layer on Kaleido is identical tech to 2 x 2 filter layer omn LCD and the panel is simply the mono ink, and the eink panels are so much more expensive than LCD, the extra cost for Kaleido on an ereader should be negligible. It does need a different driver ASIC for efficiency, but so did the 2 x 2 pattern instead of stripe LCDs, or 2 x 2 OLEDs.

Bigme tried Gallery 3.

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

Barnes & Noble and Nook's are U.S. only. Not a thing in Canada.

Thanks. I wasn't 100% sure. The app doesn't even appear on Playstore on Android in Ireland, though I can see it via the browser on Linux workstation.

[rantanplan]

Looking at all reviews for the Remarkable Paper Pro it looks fast enough. Not sure where you got your information from.

[texasnightowl]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Yes, at the moment the books downloaded to the 12th gen PW can be deDRMed. I guess that will change, though.

So I did just do a little test. I used my PW5/11th gen. Calibre 7.23 plus nodrm alpha plus kfx input. I dragged a kfx file from my pw5 (\documents\downloads\items01) to Calibre. It did show up in Calibre as kfx and I was then able to convert it to azw3 with no errors, so all good.

I did notice that the covers are grayscale/bw instead of color? Are there other gotcha's or things I should know about kfx imports? Or are there other settings or process I should be aware of?