Tag: amazon

Per the start of 2025 I stopped buying ebooks from Amazon. This means trying to find other ways outside of the Kindle ecosystem to acquire ebooks, preferably without lock-in. I maintain my library using Calibre and Epubor, and use those tools to be able to manage my book files locally and to read them on any device I have, in the right file format.
I read in three languages, fiction and non-fiction, and buy 50 to 100 books per year.

There are several ways to buy ebooks outside of Amazon. All options outside Amazon use the EPUB standard, sometimes with DRM and/or water marks. These are the options I’ve used since I’ve stopped using Amazon:

Directly from authors

Various authors sell their ebooks directly from their own sites. This has the benefit that more money goes directly to them, and there will be no DRM on the files.

  • Cory Doctorow (sf, non-fiction)
  • Michael W. Lucas (sf, non-fiction)

    • I’ll keep adding authors I can buy directly from to this list, suggestions are welcome too.

    Directly from publishers

    There are publishers that directly sell from their sites.

  • Verso Books, a UK based self-proclaimed radical left publisher, of fiction and (mostly) non-fiction. I have a monthly subscription which gives me access to all their ebook publications. I don’t find something of my liking every month, but often enough. DRM free.
  • Maven Publishing, Dutch and translated into Dutch non-fiction. DRM free, I’m not sure if the books are water marked.
  • Standard Books, a USA based publisher of English public domain works (fiction and non-fiction), released for free and as public domain (you can make donations, I do). Public domain works in the USA may still be copyrighted elsewhere.
  • Reclam Verlag, German literature and non-fiction, aimed at school use. DRM free with water marks.

    • I’m looking for more publishers that sell their own ebooks, feedback welcome.

    Other independent platforms

    Some platforms that aren’t tied to specific ecosystems sell ebooks. Be aware of what type of DRM they use, and determine first if you can handle that type of DRM.

  • ebooks.com, a USA based seller, using Adobe DRM although the site itself suggests they have their own type too.
  • Beam, German platform for DRM free ebooks, with water marks. Large selection of SF. By the looks of it German language only. Only accepts account holders with addresses in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
  • Libris.nl, the platform of a chain of Dutch booksellers. Adobe DRM for English books, DRM free and water marks for Dutch books. Fiction and non-fiction. You can select your preferred actual book store first, and have your purchase accrue with them. Libris collaborates with the German Tolino e-reader maker.
  • Morawa, Austrian chain of booksellers (since the 19th century), ebooks can have DRM, but also many with water marks. They don’t sell outside of Austria . However you can add any Austrian address, as that doesn’t affect your downloads.

    • From other silo’d ecosystems

  • Rakuten Kobo, a Japanese company, selling ebooks for their Kobo ecosystem. DRM’d (Adobe). Sometimes cheaper than the main Dutch Kobo platform (Bol.com). Sales to EU through their Irish legal entity.
  • Bol.com, the largest Dutch online platform for books. Part of the Kobo ecosystem. Fiction and non-fiction, Dutch and English. DRM’d for English books, DRM free and water marked for Dutch language books.
  • Tolino, the German e-reader manufacturer Tolino works with the German book retail sector, like e.g. the Thalia and Hugendubel chains, or non-chain bookstores like Dussmann in Berlin (although Dussmann also works with the Ukrainian/Swiss Pocketbook ereader company. Adobe DRM is in use but many works are also DRM free and water marked. It seems a German residential address needs to be added to an account at these stores before buying ebooks is possible.

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    This year I decided to no longer spend any money with Amazon. Over the years I’ve spent quite a bit at Amazon on mostly e-books, and some paper books.
    I’m exploring other options of buying and acquiring ebooks. Today I decided to divert some of the money I would otherwise have spent at Amazon as donations to Standard Ebooks.

    Standard Ebooks is a US based ‘low profit‘ organisation that creates ebooks from books that are (considered to be) in the public domain in the USA, and releases those ebooks into the public domain themselves.
    It ensures works are available as ebook, also when there’s no commercial entity willing to market an ebook version.

    Creativity builds on creativity, creators mutually influence each other across borders and across time. The public domain is a key societal boon. In my voluntary work for the Open Nederland association, the focus is on facilitating the use of Creative Commons licenses for makers in the Netherlands. Creative Commons allows you to set generic permissions for various types of use, thus allowing creative works to flow more easily, both to the public and to other makers.

    Making public domain ebooks from public domain books is a similar act. It ensures that human creativity available in the public domain keeps growing, despite various publishing houses actively campaigning against it (or even aiming to limit library access to works).

    Much better to spend money there than at Amazon.
    I’m diverting about 25% of my previous Amazon spending to Standard Ebooks.

    There are various kinds of RSS feeds that I can access as a patron, as well as an OPDS feed for their entire collection. Such an OPDS feed, like with podcasts, allows one to distribute books and book collections as feed payload. My Calibre library tool (as server) and various e-readers (as client) can work with such feeds.

    There is one caveat: whether something is in or out of copyright, depends on your location as you download a work. Works can be in the public domain in e.g. the US, where Standard Ebooks is located, but still in copyright elsewhere and vice versa. Your location determines if you are breaching copyright when downloading a work.

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    In several jurisdictions (certainly the USA and Australia, Germany too) Amazon Kindle customers are told that by February 25th the ability to download books to your computer (for later transfer to your device over USB) will be disabled. I haven’t seen it in my Dutch Amazon store yet. That makes me wonder if it is a phased roll-out. This won’t prevent you from reading your e-books in any way, but will prevent you from storing them in useful formats outside of the Amazon silo (so that Amazon no longer can remove them at will).

    I realise my steps to move all my Amazon bought e-books to an environment I control have been timely (yet, also late by several years one might say).

    Within the next 10 days downloading Kindle book files and using Epubor to move them into your Calibre library should likely be a priority if you care about long term autonomy over your e-readings. Enshittification avoidance is a civic duty I’d say.

    Where enshittification happens it must be made to hurt the companies choosing it. Like by no longer sending money their way. So this step just makes avoiding Amazon purchases easier to keep up for me.

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    Last week I talked about not sending money anymore to Amazon. Today was international Switch Day, to encourage people to leave enshitified platforms for saner and cleaner alternatives. I don’t have much to switch away from left though. From FOSDEM, this weekend in Brussels, I’m hearing rumours about some well known US internet services seeking to relocate to EU jurisdictions. A different type of switching, but highly interesting.

    I, in line with today’s theme, made some steps to improve my Amazon hygiene.
    Making it easier for myself to read outside of Kindle world will go a long way of leaving Amazon behind. Moving towards new routines makes leaving old routines behind more doable, I hope.
    With that in mind I centralised my e-book management fully in Calibre. A tool I have been using for years, just not for all my e-books yet. I changed that today.
    Using the Epubor tool it was easy enough to ensure the e-books I bought in Kindle world and in Adobe world can be accessed by Calibre. All non-fiction titles (some 500) I bought over the years from a range of sources have now been added to Calibre.

    This brings two immediate benefits:

  • I can now move all of these titles to my NOVA BOOX e-reader directly
  • Using the Calibre content server, I can search and read my collection directly from within my Obsidian notes. (I already have a note for each book)

    • I will organise the non-fiction books in Calibre a bit more, and then also move over the 800 or so fiction titles from Amazon for similar easy findability and access. [UPDATE 20250202 I added all the fiction e-books I have to Calibre as well. Every title of the 1200 e-books or so I bought since 2010 is now accessible in Calibre for me]

    Meanwhile I also initiated my ‘books to maybe buy’ list in my notes, to counter instant gratification urges.
    On the e-book purchasing side of things, I noticed that ebooks.com has a search filter for DRM free books, but Dutch platforms Bol and Libris don’t. Bol and Libris use watermarks for Dutch e-books (meaning they’re DRM free but the files contain a reference to the buyer) and Adobe DRM for books from outside the Netherlands.

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    Bookmarked Commission opens non-compliance investigations against Alphabet, Apple and Meta under the Digital Markets Act (by European Commission)

    With the large horizontal legal framework for the single digital market and the single market for data mostly in force and applicable, the EC is initiating first actions. This announcement focuses on app store aspects, on steering (third parties being able to provide users with other paths of paying for services than e.g. Apple’s app store), on (un-)installing any app and freedom to change settings, as well as providers preferencing own services above those of others. Five investigations for suspected non-compliance involving Google (Alphabet), Apple, and Meta (Facebook) have been announced. Amazon and Microsoft are also being investigated in order to clarify aspects that may lead to suspicions of non-compliance.

    The investigation into Facebook is about their ‘pay or consent’ model, which is Facebook’s latest attempt to circumvent their GDPR obligations that consent should be freely given. It was clear that their move, even if it allows them to steer clear of GDPR (which is still very uncertain), it would create issues under the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

    In the same press release the EC announces that Facebook Messenger is getting a 6 month extension of the period in which to comply with interoperability demands.

    The Commission suspects that the measures put in place by these gatekeepers fall short of effective compliance of their obligations under the DMA. … The Commission has also adopted five retention orders addressed to Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft, asking them to retain documents which might be used to assess their compliance with the DMA obligations, so as to preserve available evidence and ensure effective enforcement.

    European Commission

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    Over the years I have linked to many books from this blog, usually to an Amazon page with an affilliate link. In the early days (2003-2004) of such affilliate links I made 70 USD at one time, and then nothing. Over time linking to Amazon, links that included a tracking pixel for years, became less helpful for readers to find books, and more helpful for Amazon to track readers.

    I stopped linking to Amazon last year April, but this blog still held the links I previously made. When I deleted my Amazon affilliate account they gave me a gift card with the outstanding balance: 35 cents. They still got their tracking on the links I used here though, so those links needed to go. Removing such links isn’t much work, but I wanted to maintain the usefulness of my postings, by linking to an author’s homepages, Wikipedia entries, as well as to the publisher’s page, Wikipedia page, Internet Archive or Open Library page for their books. That work does cost time, and is now finished. I no longer link to Amazon on this blog anywhere (nor Amazon’s Goodreads), and no Amazon tracking pixels remain.

    I do still buy e-books from Amazon, although that too is ever so slowly shifting to other sources (directly from publishers for instance). It’s just that I no longer send any website visitor’s data their way as well.