Amazon has removed Download & Transfer option

[Ma'am-I-Am]

Originally Posted by haertig

Smartphones are taking over most everything. Want to buy a standalone MP3 player? The selection is quite meager these days. The days of the Palm Pilot digital assistants are gone too. I imagine eReaders will eventually disappear as well. Even calendars and day planners are going the way of the dodo bird - being replaced by smartphone apps.

LOL! Believe it or not, I still use my HP iPaq 2210(2215?). It has my favorite Solitaire suite which never got re-made for cell phones!

[JSWolf]

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.

Well, the PW5 did sell out. I think that was pretty successful.

Plus, Amazon has released new Kindles not that long ago. I think anyone who has a new Kindle would be pissed if Amazon discontinued them.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

And for a touch of humour, one site that seemed to used BadeReader as their main data source had the following line:

[quote[Amazon, Kobo, and Sony are the top three e-reader companies, controlling 88% of the market.

[/QUOTE]

Whatever that site is, the one doing the research are doing it all wrong and looking way too far in the past for their data to be even remotely accurate.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by MarjaE

I know people talk about reading on smartpains, but that seems like reading on a lightbulb. There's no way that does work, or doesn't hurt.

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

[Uncle Robin]

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.

Because of Kobo's Price Match offer, where they make up any difference plus a percentage extra as store creidt, I habitually check the prices in both stores for basically every book I buy. Of the ~200 ebooks I've bought in the last 2-3 years, I've invoked the Price Match offer maybe 3 times, never in the last 12 months. For the books I buy, the prices are always within a few cents of each other, and more than half the time that tiny advantage is acyually on the Kobo Store. BUT of course, KU exclusivity means some books are only available there, which is a real pain.

[Waylander]

Originally Posted by tomsem

My second choice for purchasing is Google. Usually everything is price matched, and sometimes books are offered in both PDF and ePub. I know PDF is sorta disparaged here but for some books fixed layout is much better. Unlike Amazon (and ironically considering how they make most of their money) they don't bombard you with ads.

But important to make sure you can 'export' the book before purchasing.

Off topic, but how does one import an ebook from Google Play into Calibre on a Mac? All I got for one book I purchased was an acsm file, not the actual book.

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by tomsem

My second choice for purchasing is Google.

Here, I'm surprised at how few of the books I want to buy are available on Google Books. Kobo basically has >95% of the range of Kindle Store, Google Books would be in the 30-40% range. And almost always MUCH more expensive than either Kobo or Kindle.

[jonathan2022]

Originally Posted by Waylander

Off topic, but how does one import an ebook from Google Play into Calibre on a Mac? All I got for one book I purchased was an acsm file, not the actual book.

There is a acsm plugin here. In the topic Calibre sub heading Plugins. not sure if I am allowed to post link

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by jonathan2022

There is a acsm plugin here. In the topic Calibre sub heading Plugins. not sure if I am allowed to post link

You are allowed to post the link.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Jedi425

Hey folks, I updated an old mass download script to work with Amazon's current scheme. You can find it here:

https://github.com/Jedi425/BulkKindl...er/tree/master

I've only tested it on Linux, so no idea if it works in Windows PowerShell/CMD.

You can also specify ASINs to download.

Get downloading, everyone!

I've tried to tweak this script for Amazon UK with no success. I can get it to run up to the download part, but all the download requests return a 404 response. I've looked at the download URL from Amazon UK, and it's the same server, but has one enormous authorisation token in the URL instead of separate ones.

[Quoth]

From 26th February 2025 Amazon is removing Download and Transfer. This means only delivery by WiFi direct to a Kindle or Kindle App. Amazon always put DRM on KFX, ignoring publisher request for DRM free. All Kindle Apps, Fire and eink Kindles after the Paperwhite 1 get KFX rather than azw3/KF7, which was DRM free.

So to continue to get the DRM free versions you must purchase from the Publishers that insists on DRM free from Kobo, Google, ebook, Smashwords etc.

Amazon may claim that if "DRM free" is selected then the KFX file will work on any KFX enabled Kindle (any after PW1) or Kindle App or Fire tablet. That's disingenuous monopolist behaviour! KFX is a proprietary protocol* and format only supported by Amazon and always has some form of DRM, i.e. encryption.

[* It allows starting to read while downloading]

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

From 25th February 2025 Amazon is removing Download and Transfer. This means only delivery by WiFi direct to a Kindle or Kindle App. Amazon always put DRM on KFX, ignoring publisher request for DRM free. All Kindle Apps, Fire and eink Kindles after the Paperwhite 1 get KFX rather than azw3/KF7, which was DRM free.

So to continue to get the DRM free versions you must purchase from the Publishers that insists on DRM free from Kobo, Google, ebook, Smashwords etc.

Amazon may claim that if "DRM free" is selected then the KFX file will work on any KFX enabled Kindle (any after PW1) or Kindle App or Fire tablet. That's disingenuous monopolist behaviour! KFX is a proprietary protocol* and format only supported by Amazon and always has some form of DRM, i.e. encryption.

[* It allows starting to read while downloading]

It's the 26th of February, not the 25th.

[lkmiller]

Originally Posted by Waylander

Off topic, but how does one import an ebook from Google Play into Calibre on a Mac? All I got for one book I purchased was an acsm file, not the actual book.

Download the book by opening the acsm file with Adobe Digital Editions (authorized with an Adobe ID). Or there is the ACSM Input (aka DeACSM) plugin available in calibre. (I haven't used the latter myself.)

I've been getting most of my ebooks from Kobo for years. Ever since B&N started really making it difficult to get your hands on the book files back in early 2019 I think.

Pricing is usually the same. Occasionally cheaper. Price matching is easy if not. If they are DRM-free, they really are, unlike Amazon's kfx. If they have DRM, there are two ways to download and free them from either Adobe DRM or Kobo DRM.

[mascalwer]

I have a kindle paperwhite from 2016, I bought a new ebook from amazon (published 2024), and I tried going down the path of delivering an ebook there.
It was delivered as .kfx + addtional folder.
So I guess that means this way doesn't work.

edit: forgot to add - when I download it the old way, via D&T, it comes normally as .azw3

[Waylander]

Thanks for the advice on acsm and Calibre. I only purchased one ebook from Google because weirdly it wasn't on Amazon or Kobo.