How to dump Amazon for digital books?

October 8, 2024 7:48 AM

I want to switch from Kindle to Kobo and to stop buying (or borrowing via overdrive) books from Amazon. How do I also continue to access the 1200+ (800 unread) books on my Kindle right now? Do I have to have two devices? Reading on a tablet is not an option -- I need a single-use reader with an e-ink screen and long battery life. If Calibre is part of the answer, can you please share a high-level overview of how that would work? I'm having trouble imagining it.

The goal is to stop giving Amazon money for books, from me directly or from my library (via their overdrive subscription). I do understand that I don't "own" these books and only have licenses to them.

posted by OrangeDisk to Technology (6 answers total)

Calibre is what you want for this. Here's a reddit post with details on installing Calibre and the DeDRM plugin to remove DRM from any books you have.

Essentially, you'll install Calibre, during the setup you'll define a folder on your computer to host your Library. When you connect your Kindle to your computer Calibre will see it. You can then use Calibre to transfer any/all books from your Kindle to your Library. At this point you may want to check the title and author formatting and correct any issues. Then covert any .azw books to the .epub format. Kobo's help page indicates that it will support the .mobi format which was what Amazon used before switching to .azw. Once you've converted the files to a supported format, you can connect your Kobo to your PC and use the send to device option in Calibre.
posted by zinon at 10:29 AM on October 8

The above comment is correct.
posted by tiamat at 4:38 PM on October 8

Concur on the correctness of the comment. Once the files become ePubs they will transfer right over to the Kobo.
posted by lhauser at 5:12 PM on October 8

I had this problem, and I solved it by buying an e-ink tablet that runs android. This lets me use the native apps for Kobo, Kindle and Nook. I still have to use the kindle app to read books, but I have access to them. I also use the New York Times on it as well. If you want to convert your books over with calibre, you can use whatever reader you want from the google play store or use their built in reader, which is pretty good.

I bought a Boox Palma, and it's great. Smaller than a kindle even! They make a range of products depending on what size and features you need. https://www.boox.com/ As far as battery life, it's longer than my kindle if I keep wifi off.
posted by bensherman at 5:41 PM on October 8

I love the idea and I too solved the same problem with a Boox e-ink device and I too like it much better than other things
posted by jander03 at 6:38 PM on October 8

I am thinking of a Boox device, maybe, but not the Palma. It would be basically like reading on my phone. If it were me, I'd go with one of their 7 inch tablets; however if you want a single-use device I'm not sure whether they outdo the Kobo devices - and I have no direct experience with either, yet.
posted by TimHare at 10:15 PM on October 8