ebooks

FYI mainly for US folks:

Starting February 26, 2025, the “Download & Transfer via USB” option will no longer be available. You can still send Kindle books to your Wi-Fi enabled devices by selecting the “Deliver or Remove from Device” option.

This is very annoying for a variety of reasons but technically you can still download your books to your Kindle, and then move that file to your computer (and/or into Calibre if you use that program). It's more likely to be in KFX format than AZW3, however, and I'm not sure if DRM can be removed from KFX format...

Discussion here on Mobileread with more info.

Tags:

What it says in the title. (Points up.) The main page (points down) has links to the various e-sellers (Amazon, Nook, Apple, Kobo, Google). If romance is your jam -- and there seems to be a decent number of M/M romance as well -- head on over.

https://www.romancebookworms.com/

Feel free to link to this post, or just copy/paste/post where you think people would like to know.

Tags:

Amazon.com and 'Big Five' publishers accused of ebook price-fixing | Ebooks | The Guardian:
Amazon.com and the “Big Five” publishers – Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan and Simon & Schuster – have been accused of colluding to fix ebook prices, in a class action filed by the law firm that successfully sued Apple and the Big Five on the same charge 10 years ago.

The lawsuit, filed in district court in New York on Thursday by Seattle firm Hagens Berman, on behalf of consumers in several US states, names the retail giant as the sole defendant but labels the publishers “co-conspirators”. It alleges Amazon and the publishers use a clause known as “Most Favored Nations” (MFN) to keep ebook prices artificially high, by agreeing to price restraints that force consumers to pay more for ebooks purchased on retail platforms that are not Amazon.com.

The lawsuit claims that almost 90% of all ebooks sold in the US are sold on Amazon, in addition to over 50% of all print books. The suit alleges that ebook prices dropped in 2013 and 2014 after Apple and major publishers were successfully sued for conspiring to set ebook prices, but rose again after Amazon renegotiated their contracts in 2015. ( Read more... )

Tags:

Copying and pasting from

arduinna

"I somehow missed that this was happening a few months back, so maybe other people did, too.

My Kindle for PC updated itself silently to version 1.19, which is compatible with Amazon's latest formatting. This is great for being able to use the new formatting! This is not so great if you use Calibre to manage your library. Calibre can't read or even recognize the new format, so can't import your books.

If you use Calibre, the easiest thing to do is to uninstall Kindle 1.19 and reinstall the older version, 1.17, and make sure that the "automatically update" box is unchecked.

The Mobileread forum has a thread on how to do this, including direct links to safe downloads of v 1.17 on Amazon. It also has instructions for other methods, if you don't want to downgrade your Kindle for PC/Mac."

Tags:

amazon,
kindle

Lendle.me, a site for connecting with people to lend those Kindle books that allow lending (1x per book, for two weeks only) has been effectively shut down by Amazon. (They shut off the API that allows for easy listing of what's available. Lendle could still help people find each other, but it'd have to build its own database of ebooks.) CNET seems to have the most details, including the mention that "According to Amazon, Lendle does not 'serve the principal purpose of driving sales of products and services on the Amazon site.'"

(Insert rant: because of course, people who got to read a book for free would never buy one later--not to get a permanent copy of that book, nor other books by the same author.)

Several other ebook lending sites for Kindle & Nook, have sprung up recently, and they've got to be wondering what's in store for them. Since loaning books seems like a fairly obvious connection to selling books, readwriteweb speculates that Lendle ran afoul of some other aspect of Amazon's Terms of Service.

Tags:

Something to watch out for:

A class-action lawsuit filed Wednesday alleges Amazon.com fraudulently circumvents users' Web-browser privacy settings to collect personal information without permission and share it with other companies.

Tags:

amazon,
news

Apparently, you can loan some Kindle books now:

From an Amazon Help page:
Eligible Kindle books can be loaned once for a period of 14 days. The borrower does not need to own a Kindle -- Kindle books can also be read using our free Kindle reading applications for PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android devices. Not all books are lendable -- it is up to the publisher or rights holder to determine which titles are eligible for lending. The lender will not be able to read the book during the loan period.

And there are directions on that page for doing this. Anyone feel like testing this feature and giving us a trip report?

Edit: Okay, I found a couple books that had the "Loan This Book" button, and it looks like anything that can be loaned will use the Nook model. I.e. lend it once for 14 days, and that's it. This included a book that I know that the author published on his own through Amazon, which makes me think that the feature is more or less an item they're putting in so that Barnes and Noble can't say they're the only ones that do it.

I do wonder if self-publishers will eventually be able to make it so their book can be loaned more than once, but I also doubt that Amazon has made provisions for that straight off.

Tags:

Amazon ending Download & Transfer by USB

Free e-books. One day only (Dec 26th). All romance genre.

Amazon.com and 'Big Five' publishers accused of ebook price-fixing

Calibre and Kindle for PC or Mac

Amazon shuts down Lendle

If You Use a Kindle...

Woah

Profile

Links

Syndicate

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags