Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

elicash

> The company has disclosed to Good e-Reader that Amazon is developing a new Kindle for PC app, but it will only be compatible with Windows 11.

ravenstine

They're likely doing this because it's likely the only remaining loophole to their new DRM scheme. Too bad for them it's caused me to buy all my ebooks elsewhere.

AdmiralAsshat

Combined with the announcement that they're killing the old Kindles as well...this is 100% about preventing people from liberating DRM from their books. Full stop. They are closing each and every remaining hole.

Multicomp

I never bought into Kindle because of this lockdown attitude. I buy audiobooks from audiobookstore and ebooks from google play books when lazy and itch and the other usual independent sites that sell drm free files when I'm not doing a jit in time purchase. I have a kindle I USB sideload or put files on sd card, because it has a physical keyboard. But with the state of digital goods disrepect for the customer and locking us in mustache twirling reasons, I have better ways to spend my income. Yes I am not above reading shadow copies of books at times, but I'd rather kindle sell all titles as DRM free on rootable devices and their convenient storefront would be enough for me to direct my business there more.

j45

Good thing I'm discontinuing Kindle for me.

wrxd

I’m so happy I downloaded all my Kindle books when I still had a chance and then moved to the Kobo ecosystem, which albeit not perfect is much much better

wiether

It's funny that the top product recommendation on the website is the "Kobo Remote Control", which is the main thing that is making me think of going to Kobo once my Kindle Paperwhite is dead. Amazon abandoning +14yo products, I don't care. I'm surprised they kept them alive that long. And they'll still work, just not with the store. The DRM/Kindle for PC thing, I don't care. I'm perfectly aware that "buying" a digital good is actually a temporary license. I'm paying for the convenience, not to own "something". And since I've paid my fair share of "copie privée" tax, if I want to grab a persistent copy of an ebook I purchased on Amazon, I got it from the high seas.

lores

These convenient and cheap book/game/video platforms sure killed piracy. Now that piracy's gone forever, we can enshittify the whole thing again! At least I imagine that's how it went in the meeting of 35 year-old corporate suits.

shrubble

After Anthropic wholesale pirated millions of books, and got only a slap on the wrist and no jail time, and Meta did almost the same, I've decided that "Anna's" plus used physical books plus printed new books are the right combination.

nightski

I have a smattering of books on Kindle, mostly fiction/novels. But the vast majority of my book conllection consists of non-fiction/textbooks and I recently switched to Booklore on my NAS. I have over 900 textbooks and can access them anywhere via a WireGuard VPN. It's so slick! Booklore seems great, but I'll admit there may be even better options. However this is the future of books for me. I'd like to start replacing more and more of my physical books with pdf/epub copies. It's been hard because there is nothing I love more than sitting down with a physical book. But this is definitely far more convenient. I now want to start building up a research paper library in the same system.

ak217

I have my Kindle permanently in airplane mode to keep it away from Amazon's shenanigans and use Calibre to upload books to it, but if/when it breaks I have a feeling my next e-reader will be a Rakuten Kobo.

arikrahman

Everyday it's proven companies are their own worst enemy, from Blizzard to Amazon. Kobo should be paying Amazon for the free marketing.

gos9

Imagine paying for ebooks in 2026 lmao

rgovostes

A number of comments are along the lines of "people will just pirate books from Library Genesis / Anna's Archive". It seems obvious the motivation is cutting off the supply of new books to those sites.

themadturk

Glad to have gotten off Kindle and onto Kobo years ago. Enshittification continues on. Now, we just have to wait for the publishers to put the screws to Rakuten...

Bridged7756

FYI if you have an older kindle you possibly can jailbreak it and getting KoReader on in. Even newer Kindles can be jail broken, provided they're on the right version.

outlore

Get a kobo Libra color. Put Koreader on it. add the bookfusion or LocalSend plugin. Thank me later