As Rob pointed out last week, Amazon is killing support for a number of its older e-readers. In the near future, owners of first- and second-generation Kindles and the Kindle DX won't be able to use their e-readers to borrow reading material or download newly purchased books from the Amazon Kindle Store. If you own one of these devices, it might feel like you're being screwed: the damn things were working fine last week; there's no reason why they shouldn't be able to keep on keeping on.
Bummer. But what you actually have here is an outstanding opportunity. With Bezos' Bozos turning their backs on your long-serving hardware, you'll be freed from the shackles of their stewardship.
One of the best reasons to own a Kindle is the wealth of content at your disposal. If there's something you want to read, you can likely find it in the Kindle Store. But with this perk gone, there's no reason to stick with your Kindle's stock operating system or apps. Jailbreaking used to be a scary process that could turn an expensive piece of hardware into an expensive paperweight if you weren't careful. Doing it to a Kindle of late is dead simple — Jason and I both did it recently, and I've no regrets. A jailbreak of Ye Olde Reading Slab will allow you to do things like install a superior e-reading program on your device, download new books from cloud services like Dropbox, and wirelessly transfer content from your laptop using Calibre.
Speaking of Calibre: Amazon has turned its back on you, so it's time to turn your back on Amazon. You paid good money for the books you downloaded from the Amazon Kindle Store. But you've never owned them — your user agreement with the company states that they can change the content of your purchases at any time they please. What's more, you can only read them on an Amazon-approved device, thanks to some ugly Digital Rights Management baked into your Kindle files.
Screw that: I say you bought it, you own it. So long as you're not sharing it with others all over the Internet, you should be able to do whatever you want with your digital books. One of the easiest ways to get your Kindle purchases onto other devices (or for use with a new reading app on your jailbroken hardware) is to use a plug-in for Calibre. The only catch is that you'll need to have downloaded your purchases to your computer last year, before Amazon lowered the boom on keeping localized content.
Finally, there's a world of DRM-free content available to buy legally from a variety of sources or to download for free. One of the best-known free collections of ebooks is Project Gutenberg — its books are available in several formats, making them accessible on multiple platforms. Into Sci-Fi and Fantasy? Tor has you covered. Then there's Haymarket Books, one of my favorite imprints: it offers a wide range of left-leaning non-fiction from some of the best authors at work today. If you'd like to hear from a fellow Happy Mutant, Cory Doctorow's work is available to download from his website. And if there's an independent bookstore you adore, you may be able to support it by purchasing your new books from bookshop.org.
Previously:
