Amazon has removed Download & Transfer option

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

There was a proof stage somewhere between the ocr garbage and the final glyphs that were positioned on the screen.

…

The final product (glyphs positioned on the screen with some sort of coordinate system) was utterly unusable for searching or conversion to other formats.

So a nice idea in theory that in practice was fairly rubbish. No wonder it's gone.

I looked to see on my cloned 2002 laptop to a VM if I'd ever had an early "Kindle Converter for PC" as that allegedly originally could make Topaz format. I didn't, but there was Mobi Creator and a Kindle Kids Creator. So I looked on my server archive of Win Install and there was a KindleForPC-installer-1.21.48017.exe and I tried it, but nothing happened after installer loader reached 100%. So I looked online and the oldest to quickly find was kindle-for-pc-1.2.1.30427.exe though it wanted Windows Messenger 5.1 (!). It didn't work either. Curiously it wanted to load a web page to Deregister the Kindle at uninstall!

The first Kindle came out 2007 / 2008 (not many in 2007 I think) and Vista arrived in 2007. I'd have imagined an early "Kindle Converter for PC" would have run on XP as the much later Kindle Kids thing did. I still have some real XP stuff somewhere, but I think I've lost interest.

I imagine converting Topaz to anything other than an image based PDF gives results like Archive Org's epub / mobi / azw3 on the fly from their unproofed OCR layers on their PDFs. Really only their PDFs are readable.

Maybe the only remaining use for a DXG is Topaz?

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Quoth

So a nice idea in theory that in practice was fairly rubbish. No wonder it's gone.

Absolutely true.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by Quoth

So a nice idea in theory that in practice was fairly rubbish. No wonder it's gone.

...


Maybe the only remaining use for a DXG is Topaz?

It's not gone: every Kindle and Kindle app in existence today knows how to render them.

The only exception I know of is Kindle for Web; probably the defunct Windows Phone/RT/8 app and webOS apps didn't either.

One might think a large publisher like Springer would remove their Topaz titles and replace them with ones using newer format.

Well they have added listing for the newer format, but at least for one I checked, neglected to remove or change the one for Topaz.

The Topaz version (works on every Kindle or Kindle app) will set you back $89, the Print Replica version (Kindle apps only) is $39.49.

[bluepeter]

I haven't managed to download a usable .kfx into Calibre. If anyone could explain what I'm doing wrong, I'd be very grateful.

I have the KFX Input (2.19.0) and DeDRM (10.0.9) plugins. Whilst I've seen references above to a later(?) alpha version, I haven't been able to find it in a format in which I can load it into Calibre (i.e., DeDRM_plugin.zip or a .zip containing that file).

When I tried loading a KFX book from K4PC (2.6.1), it came into Calibre, but as a KFX-ZIP, which I understand means that it was still bound by DRM.

When I tried adding a book from my Kindle (11th generation, firmware 5.17.1.0.4), nothing arrived in Calibre. (I told it to download This PC\Kindle\Internal Storage\documents\Downloads\Items01\A Briefer History of Time_B00351YEZS.sdr\assets\attachables\CR!52MZXT1H MD7SBA8YBF0KR0F4SZBZ.kfx. Was this the wrong file to select?)

[bustacap]

Originally Posted by bluepeter

I haven't managed to download a usable .kfx into Calibre. If anyone could explain what I'm doing wrong, I'd be very grateful.

I have the KFX Input (2.19.0) and DeDRM (10.0.9) plugins. Whilst I've seen references above to a later(?) alpha version, I haven't been able to find it in a format in which I can load it into Calibre (i.e., DeDRM_plugin.zip or a .zip containing that file).

When I tried loading a KFX book from K4PC (2.6.1), it came into Calibre, but as a KFX-ZIP, which I understand means that it was still bound by DRM.

When I tried adding a book from my Kindle (11th generation, firmware 5.17.1.0.4), nothing arrived in Calibre. (I told it to download This PC\Kindle\Internal Storage\documents\Downloads\Items01\A Briefer History of Time_B00351YEZS.sdr\assets\attachables\CR!52MZXT1H MD7SBA8YBF0KR0F4SZBZ.kfx. Was this the wrong file to select?)

try an older kindle for pc version, like 2.4.
and the alpha can be found at the dedrm tools autorelease git

[texasnightowl]

Originally Posted by bluepeter

When I tried loading a KFX book from K4PC (2.6.1), it came into Calibre, but as a KFX-ZIP, which I understand means that it was still bound by DRM.

too new. look for K4PC 2.4.70904

When I tried adding a book from my Kindle (11th generation, firmware 5.17.1.0.4), nothing arrived in Calibre. (I told it to download This PC\Kindle\Internal Storage\documents\Downloads\Items01\A Briefer History of Time_B00351YEZS.sdr\assets\attachables\CR!52MZXT1H MD7SBA8YBF0KR0F4SZBZ.kfx. Was this the wrong file to select?)

I did a test from my PW5 (11th gen) and, as a warning, I do not have it connected at the moment to check so I'm going off memory and I only did this once, but...I'm pretty sure the file I dragged in was the .azw file. (.\documents\downloads\Items01\filename.azw) So not nearly so many folders down as the kfx file that you tried.

[bluepeter]

Originally Posted by bustacap

try an older kindle for pc version, like 2.4.

Thank you. That has helped - the book has now come through from K4PC (2.4.0) as a KFX, and I've managed to convert it to KEPUB. Whoopee!

Originally Posted by bustacap

and the alpha can be found at the dedrm tools autorelease git

Thank you. I've now found it. I think that I must have been looking in the wrong place the other day - all I saw then was the source code.

[Fraccy]

Originally Posted by Hellmark

Does anyone know of a grease monkey script or some other means of automating download on this? I have about 3000 books on Amazon, and I'd like to get local copies before this gets shut down, because it will take forever doing it on the device one by one.

I was able to automate the download of my ~2400 Kindle books using the command line utility from https://github.com/yihong0618/Kindle_download_helper

Log in to your Amazon account > Manage Your Content and Devices

Copy the cookie and save it to a file ('cookie.txt'): https://github.com/yihong0618/Kindle...rieving-cookie

Execute the Python utility (this example accesses amazon.co.uk):

  python kindle.py --cookie-file cookie.txt --uk -o DOWNLOADS --device_sn [Your Kindle serial no.] --mode all

You can also download a JSON list containing details of all your Kindle books:

  python kindle.py --cookie-file cookie.txt --uk --list --device_sn [Your Kindle serial no.]

There are other methods outlined in the README, but this worked best for me.

[bluepeter]

Originally Posted by texasnightowl

too new. look for K4PC 2.4.70904


I did a test from my PW5 (11th gen) and, as a warning, I do not have it connected at the moment to check so I'm going off memory and I only did this once, but...I'm pretty sure the file I dragged in was the .azw file. (.\documents\downloads\Items01\filename.azw) So not nearly so many folders down as the kfx file that you tried.

Thank you.

I now have that version of K4PC.

All I saw in my Kindle was folders with book names, and hadn't realised that there were .azw files with the same names as well. Doh! Anyway, I tried picking up the relevant .azw file instead.... and still nothing happened. However, I now seem to be able to get books from K4PC. That's not ideal (because the file names are very unhelpful), but it'll serve my purposes.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by bluepeter

Thank you.

I now have that version of K4PC.

All I saw in my Kindle was folders with book names, and hadn't realised that there were .azw files with the same names as well. Doh! Anyway, I tried picking up the relevant .azw file instead.... and still nothing happened. However, I now seem to be able to get books from K4PC. That's not ideal (because the file names are very unhelpful), but it'll serve my purposes.

You did enter the serial number of your Kindle in the deDRM plugin settings?

[Fraccy]

Originally Posted by Byrdie

Message is now showing up for me and I have 4533 books in my account, 2560 of which are backed up in my Calibre Kindle Library. That leaves 1953, after eliminating the KU borrows. Don't see how I'll ever get all those downloaded before the deadline. Kindle for PC still works with Calibre and certain Tools which I have so I can do it that way, yes? At least using that I can tell via the checkmark which ones I haven't downloaded yet, would get too bogged down & confuzzled trying to grab them from the 182 pages in Manage Your Content's Books section. This really sucks!

Automated bulk downloads, plus a JSON list of all your books: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...&postcount=338

[bluepeter]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

You did enter the serial number of your Kindle in the deDRM plugin settings?

That's a fair question - sometimes the obvious does get missed. But yes, I did.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by tomsem

One might think a large publisher like Springer would remove their Topaz titles and replace them with ones using newer format.

I feel sorry for students etc that have to buy the massively overpriced Springer ebooks or PDFs.

I expect they'd only replace them with PDF, or the Amazon equivalent

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by tomsem

It's not gone: every Kindle and Kindle app in existence today knows how to render them.

Is there a free or 99c etc Topaz anywhere I can download out of morbid curiosity?

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I'm seeing the message too now. I have several suitable E-Ink kindles, but this does make me consider moving to buying from Kobo.

Originally Posted by drofgnal

Yea, I'd consider Kobo, but for the fact that when I did a cursory search of the same title books on kobo and amazon, kobo seemed to be higher priced. Plus I look at amazon deals of the day and get some good ones that way, ultra cheap. I'm reading the omnibus edition of the first three books of Dragonriders of Peru I got for 1.99.

You express my thoughts on moving purchasing away from Amazon. But I decided to give it a go, as I was also told that Kobo will do price matching to Amazon prices, + an extra 10%.

So I decided to take advantage of a recent Kobo offer of £70 in giftcards for £60. (Buy a £60 giftcard and get an additional £10 gift card.) So The extra gift card arrived in email this morning, so I have £70 in store credit that cost me £60.

I had some hassle buying the giftcard, so contacted cusromer service, who sent me a one-off 90% discount code, which I used to buy VIP membership. So £60 got me £69.40 in credit.

And today I need to buy a book club book. At Amazon it's £5.99. At Kobo it's £5.39 (10% off for VIP members), and as I haven't used Kobo for ages, the save30 discount code works, so I get another 30% off, taking it to £3.65. Taking into account to £69.40 in credit for £60, that's another 13.5%, taking actual cost to £3.16, a 47% discount.

It's possible that I'll end up being pleased Amazon have stopped D&T, and made me look at Kobo again.

I'll have to try out their price matching on the next book.