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I went through this migration last year. A few things that helped:
Calibre is the escape hatch. Converts everything to EPUB. Even if you don't use it day-to-day, it's the best tool for getting your library out of Amazon's format.
Public domain catalogs are huge now. Standard Ebooks, Internet Archive, Gutenberg - tens of thousands of well-formatted free EPUBs. Most people don't realize how much is out there.
For actually reading on macOS/iOS, I ended up on BookShelves (https://getbookshelves.app) after trying a few options. Native app, reads EPUB and comics, has Calibre wireless sync, and browses those public domain catalogs directly. Books are just files on your device - no account, no cloud lock-in.
Honestly the hardest part was realizing how much of my library I'd been renting rather than owning.
If you're even the slightest bit tech savvy you can find a DRM stripping utility for Calibre. Apprentice Alf is long retired, but a fork of that DeDRM still is maintained
I've been using my 2012 Paperwhite Kindle with Calibre and the experience is honestly great. The only thing I miss from the Amazon shut down is Wikipedia lookup and highlight/note syncing. Otherwise, I've steered clear of Amazon DRM for a long time so I didn't really care because I was already sideloading books with Calibre.
Thanks for sharing Bookshelves. It’s great.
I can understand why one would want to move from Kindle to another device, but this article starts by complaining that support is being dropped for devices from before 2013. I can even understand being upset by this, but I have absolutely no faith that whatever other device I switch to will still be supported in 10+ years. Could be. But I sure wouldn't count on it.
Usually an unsupported device stops getting new functionality and security fixes. The unsupported Kindles lose existing functionality, i.e. the ability to add books. Not quite bricked unlike, say, Sonos, but you are limited to the books y already downloaded to them.
This is inherent to DRM, and the reason why I would never have considered buying one in the first place. The eReader I have is a PocketBook Versa. Same price as a Kindle, extensible using microSD and I can add my non-DRM books however I want. Fortunately, Apple Books ePub FairPlay DRM is fairly easy to remove, so that's where I buy them.
I feel the same way. To be honest I'm on my third kindle, their life-span seems to be about five years for me.
I don't love having to replace them, but paying €120 every five years is probably worth it. I mean that's €2/month, and I have a huge library of books which I load via calibre.
I read daily, on the bus to work, at home in bed, and while there are "more free" ereaders I've become accustomed to the kindle and have no complaints. If I were not so clumsy they'd last longer, so that's on me.
My physical library is pretty big, but being able to carry 50+ books at all times? And have a battery life of a few weeks? (I stay in airplane mode, as I transfer books via the USB cable). It's hard to complain.
The Kobo Glo, released in 2012, is still getting updates to the latest Kobo firmware version.
In fact all Kobo e-ink devices, except the Kobo Mini, wifi, and the original one, are still getting firmware updates.
Their android-based tablets with IPS screens are all discontinued though (as far as I am aware).
This is more than Amazon ever did. They haven't updated the firmware on some of their devices that are officially "supported" in years.
Support here is pretty loose. These devices were already not supported in the traditional sense. They were not getting firmware updates, they were just allowed to continue using Amazon's DRM scheme and connect to the store.
AFAIK it's still possible to authorize ancient supported ePub readers with Adobe Digital Editions and load up DRMed books from providers like Google Play even with devices like the Sony PRS-505 (e.g,https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/reader-digital-book...), despite them exiting the market over a decade ago. Kobo also has continued providing firmware updates to devices from 2011, and even their unsupported devices can still load books via ADE or the Kobo Desktop App.
I read a moderate amount I'd say, about 2 weeks average for a book, and I was using a very old and very beat-up but still functioning 4th gen Kindle until recently.
However, I woke up from my stupor when Micro$oft's eBook store closed and purged their library from under everybodies butts. Giving Amazon complete control over my library is a horrible thought, so I'm out.
I am now a happy Boox Go 10.3 + BookFusion user. Crisp screen, great battery life, full android with play store underneath. It syncs to my phone, has most of the bells and whistles I need in terms of reading, and it supports writing handwritten notes (albeit not onto the ebook itself; that's apparently too sci-fi even for 2026), and Bookfusion can sync notes into Obisidian vaults via an Obsidian plugin. I feel in control. I buy books from alternative sites with either no DRM to begin with, or where I'm confident I can remove it. Bookfusion costs me 20EUR a year.
I'm fairly happy with my setup.
EDIT: yes, I'm aware Boox are not the good guys in this story. I have not signed up to any of their services - the device is perfectly usable without that. I turned their book shop off immediately, and I do monitor+block the Chinese IPs it's trying to reach on my router.
In my view the death of the eReader is just the price fixing on ebooks -- that ebooks are sold at par with at a premium to physical books still bothers me, and I think is responsible for the fact that the Kindle is dying -- Amazon can't move enough ebooks at these price levels to be worth investing anything in interested new hardware.
> We are still dealing with a home screen that prioritizes advertisements and promoted recommendations over your actual library. Navigating a large collection of books remains a chore, with sluggish animations and a lack of robust folder management that has been a standard feature on rival devices for years.
There are two tabs on main Kindle screen - Home and Library (and also pretty good search). In Library you can see all your books AND collections as folders.
BOOX devices have their own issues https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33353640
I think Kobo has same issues with DRM as Amazon does.
Also, Kindle devices are cheaper, last time I checked, low end models of competitors, didn't have flush-front screens, like Paperwhite.
I never had problems described in this article (but YMMV of course).
While I agree with the sentiment, one nitpick - "When you buy a Kindle, you are buying a disposable product with a predetermined shelf life. Meanwhile, when you buy a Kobo, you are buying a tool that can be maintained for a decade or more." My Kindle is still going strong after 15 years, including a few years of not using it at all when I was enjoying reading physical books. That longevity is why I'm angry about this. I have a perfectly serviceable device and it's effectively being taken away from me.
Do NOT buy a Kobo device for Libby integration. It is a LIE. I found out the hard way.
Kobo only integrates with OverDrive, the predecessor to Libby. You can only use one library card at a time with OverDrive, and don't have access to the audioboks or periodicals on Libby. Meanwhile Kobo will aggressively push you to sign up for their monthly subscription to get access to that kind of content.
If you want Libby on e-paper, sans Kindle, your best bet is to look at the E Paper android tablets (I use Boox) and just install the Libby app. The experience isn't perfect but its the least worst option.
Related:
Kindle to end store downloads and registering for 1st-5th gen kindles in May
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47678320
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47690049
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47747330
Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th
The site causes cancer but the conclusion of TFA is sensible: just get a Kobo and be done with it. I had a Kindle for years but there's no reason to stick to Amazon for e-readers anymore.
The ereader scene is just a disaster that shows the dangers of prioritizing DRM.
I had ereaders for two decades, managed to read about 6 books on them and ultimately have almost nothing to do with related media forms because of the experience which replaced any actual reading routine with jumping through hoops.
You can get a Kobo Reader and disable internet access to it so it never connects to a server. You can then plug it in to your computer and it shows up as a mass storage device. Then just drop PDFs, ePubs in.
I never liked Calibre, it's weirdly shoddy software, slow as a dog, and the worst UX i've ever seen in a popular app - so I needed something I could just drop my files into.
> Amazon recently confirmed that starting May 20, these older models will lose all access to the Kindle Store. While you can technically keep reading books already on the device, the real kicker is the factory reset limitation built into the software. If you ever need to reset your device or try to register it to a new account after the deadline, it becomes a literal paperweight.
also, i use my kindle to read library books. will that still work?
I love my kobo I got Claude to SSH into it and stuff. I got it where I can say download the latest blog post from xyz, convert it to a kepub and add it.
The devices were supported for more than a decade. Sure, this forced deprecation isn’t great but it’s still had a longer lifetime than many other devices.
I’ll happily keep reading on my kindle, it’s the most ergonomic way of reading for me especially when traveling. I get that there are other options like Kobo, but I don’t see it as significantly better than the Kindles. And I like the fact that I can also use the iPad and iPhone apps for kindle to read on the go if I don’t have the physical kindle with me.
This is the company that once remotely removed 1984 (of all books). Of course they don't care about you.
Besides portability, what other benefits are there to using e-books? I vastly prefer having a physical copy of a book, mainly because I’d rather not look at a screen while reading (unless necessary.) Plus, I love lending out books to friends, and I feel like it’s a much bigger pain to do so virtually (unless they’re tech savvy!)
The big problem here is that devices can not be re-registered. It's a mean move from Amazon, and will make it difficult to re-enable extra features. However, those devices have multiple jailbreak methods available, so there's really no loss if you can take that extra step. All books are presumably still available on the kindle app / website, and because you already bought them you can pirate them.
Kindles have the best text rendering (imo), and calibre can be used to sideload books. My PW1 had stellar text rendering. My next kindle, Kindle 10 had a lower PPI but decent text rendering. I now use a PW5 and the text is flawless.
Kindle's UI does suck, though. Very slow and the keyboard is glacial. Still, page turns are zippy and it collects highlights in a central file, which is very handy.
This is hardly unique to Kindles.
I have an old iPod, which still works fine. But nearly all of its apps no longer work because the servers they connect to don't support it anymore, making it essentially useless.
Same thing happened to my older Samsung tablet.
Same thing to my various internet radios.
As someone affected by this:
-The old kindles are great products that last a long time -I don't expect Amazon to support them forever, but kindasorta bricking them on their way out is a dick move -Jailbreaking is straightforward but this probably hits older people who are not very tech-savvy the most. Like quite a few others here, I too have an elderly family member who I had to help resolve this
I feel there's gotta be some compromise between letting old electronics age gracefully so they don't occupy landfill and a company's need to support aging products over a long time... though I'm not sure what's a good model.
I'm not buying another Kindle until there's a successor to the Voyage's "Limited Edition Premium Leather Origami Cover." If a competitor wants to lure me over, that is the way.
Sure you can, just get an older one. I'm very happy with my jailbroken Kindle 4 running KOReader. AFAIK re-registering won't brick it, you can still sideload just fine.
We should be normalizing a separation of device and ecosystem. These are for consuming books, it's not an awful inconvenience to sideload every 19 hours of consumption to queue up the next read.
Amazing that it's 2026 and people who write articles on tech-focused sites are still surprised that they never actually owned the books on their Kindle. Do they also think they own their steam games, or Gmail address?
I'm a fan of the Roku e-readers. Affordable, hackable, and you can add your own books just by plugging it into your computer.
I have several Kindles for me and my kids, I have never bought a book on the Amazon store, instead I side load everything. Amazon basically subsidized a cheap and tough e-reader assuming it would drive everyone to the store, which I actively do not engage with. If it gets bricked in 10 years, I still think it would be worth it.
I switched to the Kobo ecosystem about a year and a half ago and have been pretty happy. While the book availability and store aren't at complete parity, I've only had one situation where I couldnt get the book I wanted and it was available on the Amazon store (and I read a lot of books).
Is there a cheaper _reliable_ option to Kindle?
I'm not aware of it, so unless they locked new Kindle from copying books through USB and working offline I'm not understanding what is this uproar about.
I've got my Kindle for free, so are my books copied there in last 15 years...
Side tangent: I’m the developer of Kindle Comic Converter. Kindle updates 5.19.2+ have completely broken the sideloaded manga reader with bugs like huge margins, pages being on the wrong side in 2 page landscape mode, no panel view, no % read tracker, and laggy page turns. I’ve documented the problems here and the first report was 60 days ago. https://youtu.be/Eo6K7omlE7g
And I haven’t even touched all the problems with normal sideloaded books like broken embedded/publisher fonts.
And the 11th gen seems to have the final update be 5.19.2 so there is no hope of future fixes.
Kindle settings > help > contact us > email/call if you want to voice complaints.
> Meanwhile, when you buy a Kobo, you are buying a tool that can be maintained for a decade or more.
But wasn't your Kindle that you bought prior to 2013 maintained for over a decade? 13 years really.
Every year or so, I look into alternative to my Paperwhite, which has been in "airplane mode" since I bought it. So far, nothing else seems to be quite up to the level of my existing device for my use case, let alone better.
It's possible I needed to log into Amazon in 2016 and 2020 when I bought my two Paperwhites, but I haven't needed to do so again since, so I'm not sure this will affect me at all. If it does, I'll have to check my notes for what was closest last year when I last checked.
Yep, go ePub. Have been doing that for years now, after converting my entire Amazon purchase library to ePub thanks to an old loophole.
Apple figured the correct model out years ago with iTunes Music.
I use one because of kindle unlimited, it's nice to have a big selection of books I can just hit 'read' on right on the kindle store.
I don't know if the alternative e-readers have an equivalent store? Tracking down epub files on my PC then transferring to the device multiple times a week sounds a bit frustrating as an alternative.
Also they support kindles for a long time, my kindle oasis from 2016 that I bought used still is supported, and the things battery also somehow is still in good shape.
I'm still using a Kindle Oasis (and bought a couple of unopened used ones on eBay). I need the physical page turn buttons so Amazon has basically abandoned me. Trying out the Boox and Kobo readers I was immediately struck by their leggy and unresponsive UI (and this is saying something, coming from the kindle, which is already pretty laggy). I used a Nook in a demo and was impressed, but I'm leery of buying the ereader equivalent of a Zune.
Have things improved since the last time I checked in? I really hate so much about the kindle and its ecosystem but it seems to be the best out there.
I have Onyx Boox for more technical reading and Tolino for lighter entertainment. Never buying any Amazon hardware ever again.
Always loved to have an e-ink reader but the walled gardens always made it so hard. Until I bought the xteink x4, as skeptical as I could be. What a great little device. https://www.xteink.com/products/xteink-x4
Amazon had recently closed their Android App Store as well. Practically all apps I had ever installed from the app store, including paid ones, have stopped working. Seems like Apps installed from their store had some internal dependence on the store app itself.
Has anyone done any interesting work on transflective / reflective frontlit LCD panels? It seems like this is rife for progress; LCDs can achieve densities and response rates that are beyond the reach of any eink device, and only the lack of good contrast stands in the way.
If you don't like this, physical books are wonderful.
Unpopular here but: This won't bother non-techies who aren't religiously against DRM. They love their kindles, old ones should be thrown away and they will buy a new one (with cool new features like blue light blocking mode).
I don't understand. Will they stop working with Calibre or not?
Incidentally, I hope there are alternative readers that are also just readers. No Android no "applications". I like being able to go on holiday without worrying about charging the ebook reader.
I've had so many problems with ereaders that I've just gone back to using paper books, they have a better UX and none of the issues. I love my reMarkable tablet, but I definitely do NOT use it as an ereader and have no interest in doing so.
Kindle is abandoning readers...
I got a Kindle Oasis in 2018 and it was a perfect device for me. Cellular connectivity, Bluetooth support for audiobooks, and synchronization.
I could start reading on my phone, then transition to listening in my car, and then pick up reading on Kindle. And it worked well in a literal airplane. I didn't have to faff about with WiFi passwords to sync to the latest page, thanks to the cellular connectivity.
And now Kindle devices lost cellular (why?!?), lost physical keys (facepalm), and are getting worse and worse UI/UX-wise.
Never buy another ebook from Amazon, sure.
Never buy another Kindle? I keep mine in airplane mode all the time and sideload all the books/papers I want to read. It works practically just as well as when I bought it. Why wouldn't I buy another? If Amazon makes a Kindle with color at 300 PPI, I will.
Sure, proper EPUB support would be nice, but if I need that I can jailbreak and install Koreader.
If there's another device with comparable hardware/software/battery, I'd consider it. AFAIK, Kindle still has the best standby battery life.