Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format | Hacker News Reader

Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

microsoftpressstore.com

354 pointsbumbledraven420 comments

I very consciously did not buy a Kindle when choosing an Ereader about a year ago. The Kobo H2O is incredible and has served me very well. The format support is wonderful, and the stock OS does more than I need (though there is a whole community of custom OSes that also look cool). Combined with Calibre, I don't even see what the Kindle value prop is.

> Combined with Calibre, I don't even see what the Kindle value prop is.

Easy purchasing of ebooks from Amazon, combined with their large selection of ebooks.

Yeah like, I don't wanna point out the typical HN problem but...

Imagine explaining this to someone's grandma.

"Click this Amazon shortcut, type your book name up here, click on it down below, press 'buy now'. If it doesn't show up right away, wait 5 minutes and check again."

Versus... something to do with trying to download mobi files (from where?), starting calibre, starting an import process, locating said files (this is seriously harder than you think for most people), plugging your reader into your PC, running a sync process...

1. Turn on the reader.

2. Go to "Kobo Store".

3. Look for a book.

4. Click "Buy".

5. Click the book to open it.

Thats about my workflow in the kobo, assuming I didn't drop a file on there via usb.

99% of this difficulty goes away if Grandma uses her phone or tablets browser to download unlimited free books from zlibrary and reads them on the same device.

Honestly the grandma example is starting to feel dated. When I was born in 1980 a 50 year old grandma was born in 1930 and probably didn't own a TV until they were raising their own family.

The same 50 year old today was born in 1972 and would have been 5 when the Apple II hit the scene. At what point do we realize that eventually old folks will be those that only grew up with iphones and stop assuming that anyone with grey hear needs to be assumed to be technically incompetent.

Don't know why you're being downvoted.

This born in '69 53 year old right here is programming backends and frontends for websites, and PySide5/6 Qt5/6 applications.

I'm still sharp as a pin.

Like you say, there has to be some point at which those younger than I stop thinking someone in their 50's isn't as hopeless with technology as they assume.

Of course not everyone in my Gen X'er group will be like me, then again, I know of folks in their 20's who struggle with anything IT.

Quit with the ageism, people. It's getting old ;)

I got yelled at at a conference for using my mum as an example of a user who wouldn’t use some complex software solution. I was told off for being sexist, or ageist or something.

They didn’t get it. My mum is super smart and prolific. She has a PhD in international development and has helped tens of thousands of disadvantaged kids go to school.

It’s not that she’s not smart enough. She just doesn’t care about the technology. She’s not going to spontaneously get comfortable with the terminal and learn rsync. But she can install Dropbox no problem. If a kindle just works and has all the books in easy reach, that’s what I’ll recommend to her. She’s too busy to bother with software that’s not user friendly.

That’s not ageism. I think about her a lot when I build software because I respect her. She deserves to spend her day thinking about her job, not thinking about stupid tech problems.

I agree with what you say. I've witnessed more than enough software with absolutely abysmal UI/UX and don't have time for that myself - except for when I really need to, like this one truly abysmal phone app for an energy company which I need to use to pay for my energy.

It looks and acts like it was designed/coded by idiots; additional popups to remind me to rate the app (already did and it was very negative!), a popup with an "okay, got it" prompt - the only prompt - which instead of setting that yes, I actually did get it, just pops up again the next time reminding me to use some feature I don't want to use.

And so on.

That's obviously the fault of the people involved in vomiting out the abysmal application(s).

But yes I agree, most people simply don't care about the technology, they just want a Thing to do the thing they want it to do, no muss no fuss. This situation has always been the case and I can't envisage a time when it will change.

Nearly 100% of the complexity is DRM and the need to use one device with an LCD screen to browse and one with an eink screen to read and sync from A to B.

DRM free content consumed legally or illegally on the same device is simple as netflix.

Back when Netflix first started, and they were sending out DVDs instead of doing streaming, my stepdad, who is now in his mid-80s wanted to get his money worth. So, he started ripping the movies immediately and returning them the same day, ordering more as quickly as he could. When I went to visit he'd always have added more to his bookcases of DVDs. He recently setup a NAS and Plex and copied them all over. They, my parents, have a streaming service, but they live in the boonies so the connection isn't great, and having thousands of movies and shows ready to go is great for them.

Some old people know a thing or two.

"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger."

Your stepdad sounds awesome :)

I remember Netflix quickly putting a stop to that by delaying sending out new discs when you got above some weekly threshold. I would drop off my Netflix returns at a huge, regional post office sorting facility, and I knew the discs got back to Netflix in less than 24 hours, yet they would claim they did not receive them for days. Instead of admitting to throttling, they played a shady game.

Yeah. I was born in 1957 and took my first programming class in 1973, assembly language on a PDP-8. Admittedly I'm not a typical 65 year old.

Pfft. Youngster ;). I was born in 1955, I didn't really learn to program until 1980 (and have never programmed professionally), but am plenty tech-savvy. People just have to have the need or interest to be "good" at tech, no matter their age. My mom, who is now in her mid-80s and in memory care, was able to keep up a very active life via email well into her 70s; my wife, who's a couple years older than me, knows enough to use her iPad to read, research and buy stuff online, but hands the device to me for anything more.

I highly doubt that people are thinking of 50 year olds when they're talking about grandmas.

But in answer to your question, I suspect the cliche will slowly die out when most of the 60/70/80 year olds we meet are tech savvy.

A ton of kids these days aren't that tech savvy. I work with high school kids and many have a real lack of understanding about how things work. A large number have no idea how to much with software outside of browser, believe that internet traffic travels through satellites to get between continents, and can't even debug simple printer jams.

This is my gen z experience, I hope you find it somewhat insightful:

- Your first computer given to you was probably a Chromebook at school. It is your browser. Every app is a web page. Docs, Sheets are all web pages. If you were rich or privileged you might have gotten a Macbook at school instead. But nearly everything is a web page. You use Google Docs with your friends and for group projects. I can count the people that had desktop versions of Word or Excel on one hand. You upload your videos to YouTube, presentations to Canvas or Google Drive, you don't bring in a flash drive. If you plug in a flash drive it might just show up as "External Storage (128 GB)" and not /sdcard or /media/USB0 or whatever. Even then, you don't really folder it up. You might use it to copy one file or a ton of images from one thing to another, then you format it when you're done. You don't just keep one around to build stuff up on, why bother, it's on The Cloud.

- You grow up with no hierarchical file organization. Imagine mobile. You have a "Pictures" tab I guess, and a "Downloads" tab? What else is there? You don't have album folders with FLAC files or anything; all your music streams, all your content streams, none of the apps that serve that content allow you to download them into the filesystem, if anything they do their best to prevent that. You don't have a filesystem path on iPhone. You have maybe tags and categories on Google Drive and you don't keep anything on it other than Sheets and Docs stuff that is listed by name, sorted by recent usage, and do not physically exist as files on the filesystem. Tap to select by thumbnail and Most Recent do an insane amount of work to hide what a folder is, nearly nothing but F/OSS f-droid apps on Android will expose things like /sdcard/Something or /sdcard0/emulated/Downloads. You get a selector of thumbnails.

- Mobile is first, always. Phones are cheaper than computers. Every kid has a phone, whether it's for legitimate use or for parents to abusively track them and monitor and record everything they do. Internet is always just kind of around you in the air, magically. You've never really had to think about how continents were connected, there never was a time in your life where the internet wasn't just magically all around you apart from during no signal areas. If you go to a location you ask for the wifi login. You don't ask where you plug in your ethernet cable. When you sign up for internet, unless you are specifically an enthusiast, your ISP gives you mesh wifi pods/gateway/whatever as the default. When you travel, hotel, coffeeshop, class, library, you get a wifi login. If you don't have wifi you use your phone or tether your laptop to your phone wifi.

- Rarely have a printer. If you print in class you weren't allowed to resolve paper jams yourself, and pro-tier laser printers almost never jammed even if you were doing 50+ pages at a time. When was the last time I had to print something? Your presentations are on Google Classroom/Google Drive/etc. Your homework is turned in online. Your concert tickets are on your phone with a moving barcode to prevent screenshotting (hope you have mobile service and it isn't too contended). Amazon returns are just dropped off and show them QR code, you don't print a label and they actively discourage you from choosing an option where you have to print a label.

You have to very actively seek out these things and want to learn, you can't passively pick it up like presumably in the past you had to tinker at least a little - tablets and phones are meant to force you to shut up and consume, not know about it. Chromebooks are intentionally locked down as hard as possible. Every app you use is probably a web page or a web page in a CEF wrapper.

Thank you for this. I've heard little bits and pieces of it before, but I think you've done a great job of summarizing modern "computing" for the vast majority of people.

Thanks, I hope it was useful! The printing thing is an interesting point, because I hear from older people that everyone used to have to type up and turn in their assignments printed out, and handwritten items were refused.

For a long time now, they don't want typed and printed assignments; in fact some of my instructors in primary school would actually look upon these suspiciously - the default assumption is that if you are printing it out you are trying to bypass the anti-plagiarism system. That's also partially why every assignment is turned in online: your writing is run through one or more anti-plagiarism systems (and saved for later use against yourself and others).

Yes, when I was in college (mid-1970s), turning in anything handwritten was forbidden, you had to use a typewriter. Electronic anything, of course, was unheard of; back then the only computer was the big IBM in the computing center and computer science was a subgroup of the math department.

Nowadays the most common use for my printer at home is making Amazon return labels.

High school kids have a lack of understanding of how things work? We should put them in a school or something :P

It sounds like you're the person who could be the one to teach them this stuff, is that not an option?

Larry Ellison is 77

Bill Gates is 66

Jeff Bezos is 58

I think they're doing ok.

> But in answer to your question, I suspect the cliche will slowly die out when most of the 60/70/80 year olds we meet are tech savvy.

Most younger people are also really bad at using computers.

No, not because they're ruined by smartphones—because most people seem to find most current operating systems and computer systems in general unintuitive and hard to understand. They always have and seemingly always will, unless/until UIs and core metaphors in computer interfaces change significantly.

The typical experience of most non-nerds using a computer, no matter their age, is repeating some steps they memorized and hoping the right thing happens. They don't make connections between functionality (say, thinking to try copy-pasting a file, not just selected text), they don't experiment because it usually gets them in some state they don't know how to get out of without help, and any change to UI layout or any kind of pop-up notification confuses the hell out of them. Desktop computers are mysterious, frustrating things. Observe some workers in a non-tech office using their work computers for a while and you'll see what I mean.

Grandmas are 70-90, not 50. At that point we're still close to the second world war, which is a very different path. Those folks simply cannot be expected to have any competence.

As an aside, I work with many folks around 50 and most of them are functionally technologically illiterate. It doesn't seem like such a strange assumption to make from where I'm sitting.

If you're just talking about old enough to have a grandchild, 50 is plenty old -- indeed, old enough to have gotten married after college, had a kid who got married after college, and that kid now has a kid of their own. At least one of my high school classmates did that. (I'm 51.)

If you're talking old enough to be, say, a college student's grandma, then obviously your 70-90 estimate is much more likely.

(Bigger picture: I've been professionally programming for three-and-a-half decades. I find myself more and more annoyed by the user-unfriendliness of tech as I age. As an on-topic example, earlier this month Amazon's mail-to-Kindle feature rejected an EPUB I sent it, and when I used Calibre to convert it to MOBI and sent that instead, lectured me that MOBI was obsolete. I guess this is especially annoying because it seems like they're replacing a service which basically never failed with one that is failing like 10% of the time I try to use it...)

> Grandmas are 70-90, not 50.

To a reasonable approximation:

  - Grandmothers of infants are between the ages of 40 and 80
  - Grandmothers of HN commenters are between the ages of 55 and (dead for decades)

> I work with many folks around 50 and most of them are functionally technologically illiterate

Most people of all ages are functionally technologically illiterate.

Many people around 50 are functionally literate in different technologies than you are. Those may be less relevant, or merely invisible to you as a user.

My son's grandparents are 55-63, and his one great grandparent is 76

The most common child bearing years are 18-25 ergo most people become grandparents between 36 and 50 while only 43% will live into their 70s

You're presenting it as if Kobo doesn't have its own store. It does: https://www.kobo.com/ww/en/ebooks

You can access it via Kobo e-reader, same as accessing Amazon's store on a Kindle. Somewhat more limited selection, but both contain Big Five publishers (Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, Simon and Schuster) that own hundreds if not thousands of imprints.

Calibre/OPDS server/custom software (like koreader) are an added bonus for the techies, but it's absolutely not a requirement. If your requirement is ease-of-use, there's no difference. If your requirement is a hacker-friendly device, you can do it on both, but it's in my experience somewhat easier to do on a Kobo.

A grandma might be pushing it, but my SO learned how to use Calibre and she isn't very tech-savvy.

Also, Amazon isn't as easy as it sounds - I used it a few times and found it quite confusing to get it on my Kindle after purchasing on Amazon. And its a nightmare as I moved country and would prefer to purchase a larger selection of ebooks in English from my home country etc. but I have a separate Amazon account and stuff.. that was even more confusing.

- turn up e-reader

- click apps (if it's not the default screen)

- click "whatever has store in the name"

- buy the book

- rinse and repeat

I'm sure anybody can learn how to do it, even if the brand it's not Bezos's.

The ridiculous pricing of ebooks on Amazon in the last few years has forced me to alternate sources. I'm not interested in paying through the nose for something that's far cheaper to distribute than a printed book. In today's market Kindle doesn't offer any value proposition.

When I'm buying something, I'm not thinking much about their margins. For me, it's mostly about value.

An ebook is searchable, gives me instant access to a dictionary, doesn't take up space in my house, I can read in the dark, it's more comfortable to hold, and I can set the font to a size that works for my aging eyes. That $10 ebook of The Dog Stars is a much better value for me than a $4 paperback copy.

Paper books have their place too. For example, I want physical cookbooks that I can leave open on a stand as I work in the kitchen.

An ebook is only marginally cheaper to distribute than a printed book. If you're doing a reasonable sized print run, it's only going to cost you a dollar or two to print a book.

Most of the cost is in labor to write and edit the book, which still needs to happen for ebooks.

Printing is only one of many costs, though. Shipping, returns, expen$ive retail space for physical inventory, salary and benefits for retail clerks, utilities, insurance, shoplifting losses...

For me, a 66-year-old who's been reading voluminously for about 60 of those years, the value proposition of the Kindle (or probably just about any ereader, probably) is:

1. I don't have to store all the physical books I would have acquired over the decades.

2. I can carry around a large number of those beloved books with me at all times.

3. I can vary the font size, which my ageing eyes appreciate.

Not to mention books available exclusively on Amazon due to KDP Select.

It's trading customisation/flexibility for ease of use, at a (potentially) higher cost.

The older kindles with 2G/3G "Whispersync" functionality had another major drawcard of working just about anywhere, even if you didn't have wifi coverage or a phone with data services. I have in the past used this to load several more books while in an airport in a foreign country between flights.

Many people if you hand them a Kindle can easily navigate the store and buy a book.

Without that built-in store, then they're now going to have a bunch more hurdles: they need a computer, internet access (or an offline store), the skill and ability to run and use Calibre, the knowledge of where to get eBooks from, how to get them in the right format (or convert them), etc.

The Kobo Store is really easy to use - plus Overdrive (library ebook software) is natively integrated into Kobo as well.

It’s basically equivalent to Amazon and when you purchase from Kobo (or check out from local library) it shows up automatically when you sync via wifi.

They’ll even price match Amazon (credit for difference in cost +10% bonus) just by filling out a form.

Kobo doesn't have wireless sync for third party book. That's a killing feature for many people on Kindle.

Kobo's default OS has Dropbox and Pocket support. You can just drop a book in your Dropboox and it'll appear on your Kobo through wireless sync.

Dropbox is only available on Kobo Forma, Sage, and Elipsa. It isn't available in more popular Libra 2 or Aura HD.

It's not native, you're right. Many of us have been using Kobocloud for years to automatically sync to cloud drive services: https://github.com/fsantini/KoboCloud

I won't lie, I was excited to see the technical solution here - but this appears to be a stack of horrific shell scripts fixing everything via curl. Is it dependable, in your experience?

You can use KoReader built in Calibre remote push, or you can try https://github.com/fsantini/KoboCloud/pull/35 There is working tgz but you will have to find it on your own.

koreader really is the way to go.

https://github.com/koreader/koreader/wiki/Installation-on-Ko...

But the Kobo does have a built-in store. And it does support WiFi sync. I don't see any way how a Kobo is harder to use for a non technical user than Kindle. No trade-off there x)

Well, there is also price and features. I've got a Kobo Elipsa, it was an impulse buy at a book store and I regret it because for just a little bit more you can get a Remarkable 2. The Remarkable is lighter, less bulky, faster, and has this fantastic warm backlight. The Elipsa felt like outdated, heavy tech from the start, isn't waterproof, and its notetaking functions are unusable (it's just too slow). The OS is rarely if ever updated.

Equivalent Kindles seem to be much cheaper cheaper, though, and with overall better features and maintenance. And the store is much larger. The downside is obviously that you make yourself dependent on a fairly evil company that destroys culture and the lives of many aspiring authors. But most people don't care about that.

> The Remarkable ... has this fantastic warm backlight

It doesn't have a backlight at all!

Then I must have confused it with some other brand. A colleague showed me a thin one one with light that can be regulated from cold to warm and had very fast notetaking functions.

The Remarkable 2 also isn't waterproof and also doesn't have a front light (warm or cold) at all. That's how they got it so thin. It's also awful at reading ePubs but I guess better at note taking.

Kindles aren't much cheaper. Compare the Kindle Oasis to the Libra. All you really get is a metal case for an extra $100. And the stores are pretty similar in size with the exception of like self published books which IMO are worth stripping out of search...

> functionality had another major drawcard of working just about anywhere, even if you didn't have wifi coverage or a phone with data services

I have around 50 books and a dozen of comic books on my e-reader.

It works perfectly without any connection whatsoever.

I'm not sure that being able to download a book while sitting on top of Mountain Everest it's a such an important feature, but YMMV.

Ha, funny you say that. Last time I was at Everest Base Camp nearly everyone had an e-ink kindle. The long battery life and light weight are ideal for long isolated stretches in the Himalayas.

Check and Mate.

> Last time I was at Everest Base Camp nearly everyone had an e-ink kindle

that's not surprising.

it's the most popular e-reader.

anyway, base camp is not the top of the mountain :)

where they downloading e-books with the device 2g connection from there?

> The long battery life and light weight are ideal for long isolated stretches in the Himalayas.

modern e-readers last weeks on battery and weight less than 200 grams.

> where they downloading e-books with the device 2g connection from there?

Someone able to prep for Everest knows to load all the ebooks they want on their Kindles before they leave home.

My dear Sherlock,

not to brag, but I am the same person who wrote

"I have around 50 books and a dozen of comic books on my e-reader.

It works perfectly without any connection whatsoever.

I'm not sure that being able to download a book while sitting on top of Mountain Everest it's a such an important feature"

The point being: you can preload years worth of reading material on e-books, a connection is not needed.

It was in response to a post that said

"The older kindles with 2G/3G "Whispersync" functionality had another major drawcard of working just about anywhere, even if you didn't have wifi coverage or a phone with data services"

It wasn't about mount Everest.

Sincerely yours

> where they downloading e-books with the device 2g connection from there?

Yes. The nearest village (30 min walk) had cell towers when I was last there 7 years ago. I recall having surprisingly fantastic cell service in the entire Khumbu region.

I was really sorry to see Whispersync disappear in the the most recent Kindle Paperwhite. I was more than happy to pay extra for it.

However, I've never had the kind of battery life I'm seeing on my Kindle these days. It was always good (until my previous Paperwhite suddenly went toes up) but now it's amazing.

The lack of 5 ghz wifi and micro usb are slightly annoying, but overall, I love it.

What in the world do you need 5GHz wifi for on an e-reader?

Maybe their AP only supports that?

Wouldn't it be more convenient to only need one wifi network without 2 frequencies? Especially in dense urban areas where "wifi pollution" is high and it can be difficult to find an unused 2.4GHz channel

As I said, it's slightly annoying, not a deal-breaker. It required me to change my wifi setup to be dual band (I'm in an apartment so lots of congestion on 2.4 ghz, and I don't need the extra range).

I usually disable 2.4 Ghz WiFi on the routers I set up because 2.4 Ghz WiFi is just a needless radio spectrum pollution nowadays (unless you need to connect retro devices). I initially decided to phase it out in hope of improving BlueTooth (wireless earphones) stability.

2.4Ghz covers more area.

Yeah, and because of that it quickly becomes useless in an apartment building surrounded by a few hundred 2.4GHz access points.

I hope one day people will start integrating grounded shielding into apartments walls so in every separate apartment there would only be local wifi signal and nothing else. As a bonus that would probably save us from computers extinction once the Carrington Event (powerful solar EMP) repeats.

I switched from a Kindle to a Kobo, and now back to a Kindle.

My experience was that the Kindle's responsiveness to changes (next/previous/moving around in the OS) was better, just significant enough to be bothering me when I was using the Kobo.

The latest low end kindle response time is horrendous and the material is slippy.

I lost my paperwhite so replaced it last week and the quality has really really dipped. Also it was the cheapest kindle but cost more than I originally spent in my paperwhite…

I’m returning it next week when I finish my current book.

They have three tiers. Paperwhite is the middle so you're going to see a difference with the low end model.

Newest version of the Paperwhite is a big step up. The larger screen and better processor are both put to good use.

Kindle can be significantly cheaper and easier to obtain. You can still use Calibre with Kindle, that’s what I do.

> I don't even see what the Kindle value prop is.

Availability. I can get the Kindle delivered the same day (or) the next from a village(Now a corporation) in Southern India. Once my Kindle didn't wake up, Got it replaced within couple of days near the end or after warranty period.

That said, I'm with you and wouldn't be buying a Kindle again. It's Value/Price is low for its utility, Especially since Amazon is locking up the device and has started interrupting bulk emails from approved email addresses. Also since I have started to limit my purchases from Amazon.

Now, I have to pester my friends and family from overseas to buy the Ereader not available here (or) Order one with international shipping and pray that the customs don't hold it and charge me a kidney(Compute devices are often charged 2x-3x the cost as excise duty!).

> Now a corporation

Just stating that while I understand what you meant, it could be confusing to others not familiar with subdivisions of India (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_corporation_(India))

Thanks, It's indeed confusing without specifying what a corporation is.

Coming from a small country, it is amazing to me that an urban area of at least 1 million people is referred to as a village. I consider myself to live in a town and that has only 12000 residents.

I'm from southern India too, likely even from the same state Abhishek_Muthian is from, and this meaning of corporation didn't occur even to me when reading their comment. I was wondering if they meant the village had become a company town or something. Thank you for the clarification.

> Combined with Calibre

I'd imagine something like < 1% of Kindle owners use Calibre, so presumably the value prop is... an e-reader that works well without needing any external software.

Most people just buy books from Amazon I expect, so they don't really need multi-format support.

I use Calibre primarily to...hmm, preserve my ownership of the books I have given money to Amazon for (if, for example, Amazon should decide to pull another 1984.) I certainly don't need Calibre to use my Kindle, but I'm glad I have it.

Kobo’s iOS and desktop reading experiences are very subpar (although they seem to be fixing that with new experimental features for iOS)and there’s no cloud sync for the most popular (“cheaper”) models.

Back when I was shopping for an e-reader, the Kobo was more expensive than the equivalent Kindle for the same price. Plus, Kindles go for very cheap on Prime Day.

It's more convenient to send an ebook via calibre to my kindle than to my kobo. I configured send to email on calibre, so it's just one click to send via calibre. On the other hand, I love the pocket integration on kobo whenever I want to read articles and the overdrive library integration is great. It's why we have both a kobo and a kindle shared between me and my wife.

Besides this, from an ergonomic point of view, the kindle oasis is better than the kobo sage, it's lighter, feels better in hand. The Kobo forma is better than the sage in term of ergonomy but when I had mine it broke after 13 months.

I've been using it for years with KOReader instead of the stock OS and it's been amazing. I can ssh into it, open epubs directly from my nextcloud, sync reading progress etc with calibre. It's great! KOReader is one of the best pieces of open source software i have ever come across.

I can recommend PocketBook i recently got some cheaper Touch HD model. It simply does the job. It runs linux, it has several book sync options natively and you can instal KOreader on it easy.

I am using PocketBook Touch HD 3. Design is fantastic, however... It has really annoying bugs. For a long time - it had a problem with event handling - pages not flipping (than flipping several at once). Finally fixed - after years. And then they introduced a new bug - it randomly turns one page back instead of forward - yes occasionally...

I have the same. Have you tried using KOreader? https://github.com/koreader/koreader/wiki/Installation-on-Po... recent versions really improve the reading experience over the default reader app.

I can recommend PocketBook.I recently got some cheaper Touch HD model. It simply does the job. It runs linux. It has several book sync options (including dropbox) out of the box. And you can instal KOreader on it easy which i recommend.

Kindle work very well too when you install koreader.

You need a slightly older-than-current firmware version, though, correct? I haven't kept up on Mobiread forums lately.

not sure about newer kindles i have one whose firmware does not get updates anymore.

>I don't even see what the Kindle value prop is

One reason I'm stuck with Kindles is because Amazon makes it sane to look up words when reading Japanese books and articles.

When you use Amazon's "Send to my Kindle" service (eg, you email a book to yourself, and then it appears on your device), Amazon seems to do some kind of de-conjugation which magically knows how to break-apart terms and grammar so that you can easily look anything up. Normally, if uploading straight to your device, or if using a Kobo, a term you want to look up has to match your on-device dictionary exactly, which is clunky and awful, especially since Japanese doesn't use spaces and has lots of inflections.

If Kobo had something similar, I'd ditch using Kindles entirely.

As someone whose first language isn't English - 100000x times this. The fact that I can just hold down on any word and instantly see its definition is just incredible. It's a must have feature of any e-reader for me.

Kobos have this feature

Didn't know that! Can you upload custom dictionaries to them? That was my only gripe with how Kindles do it - they support this feature in some languages but not others.

Yeah it's possible but it's not an official feature (it's not hard though).

What are you talking about? It's built right into the Kobo reader, and has been for years. https://help.kobo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360017639893-Define-...

The dictionary is a built-in official feature and includes options in few different languages but CUSTOM dictionaries are not. It's possible to add dictionaries beyond what Kobo includes but it takes a little bit of work.

I missed the "custom". Sorry about that.

It seems to be a limited selection of languages (EN, DE, ES, FR, IT, PT, TR, SE, JP on my Kobo), with both EN-XX and XX-XX available for most languages. It doesn't look like you can add your own, at least not on my kobo.

If you use Koreader then yes there are hundreds of dictionaries you can put.

I have a couple of thousand books on my ageing Kindle. Looking for a new ereader, will check out Kobo. Do you buy books from Kindle and convert them to ePub?

The Kobo book store is smaller than Amazon's, but still huge. The UI may look different, but it is still the same process of search/browse, buy/preview. Either on the web site or from the device.

All the talk of conversions and Calibre etc in the thread is possibly muddying the waters as it is totally unnecessary if you just want to mirror the Kindle flow.

I am not located in the US and dont have an american payment method. Amazon will still let me shop ebooks from amazon.com

I have previously had problems (I dont know if its still a problem) with being allowed to buy US books from other ebook stores, like kobo, when I did not have a US credit card.

The Kindle is inexpensive, has great support, has a huge library (open to non-US people with non-US credit cards), and you could just email a MOBI to it (which is great if the Kindle owner is your parent). It's only disadvantage was that it did not support ePub and so one had to go through Calibre.

Now that Kindle is supporting ePUB and no Calibre-tion is needed, I don't even see what the Kobo value prop is.

AFAIK Kindle shows you ads and can occasionally delete a book from your library. Isn't it so?

> Kindle shows you ads

Never seen an advert on my Kindle.

I turned off WiFi on mine because I was too annoyed by ads.

Where do they show up? Never seen one.

There's a specific, cheaper version (10 euros cheaper in France) that has ads in.

An ad replaces the "screen saver" when you unlock the device (until you swipe it away), and there's a small banner at the bottom of the book list in the main menu. You probably bought a more expensive version with no ads. They can also be removed later for a small fee, or you can simply never enable wi-fi and there will be no ads at all.

It shows ads if you buy the cheaper ad supported version. (They even removed the ads for me because Amazon did not sell books in my country)

If you buy a kindle that is specifically advertised as having ads(and therefore being sold for less money), then yes, you will get ads. If you don't want them, buy the ad free version.

And the deletion from your library happened...once? Over millions of titles available?

Honestly, one time is enough.

Really? I guess you don't use Steam either then?

When Steam removes a game, it means they no longer sell it, but they don't remove it from your computer nor stop you from downloading it if you already adquired it.

Typically, yes - but they have also removed games from user libraries, preventing them from ever downloading the game again - exactly like Amazon has done in that one instance with an eBook.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/12/30/steam-remov...

My point is - OP said that "once is enough" - well by that metric, I'm asking if they also don't use steam, because Steam has done exactly this at least once in the past.

The title that got removed was 1984, you can't make this stuff up

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18am...

Yeah, which is pretty incredible from PR perspective and I can't believe Amazon let that happen in the first place.

That's what happens when you design systems with no humans in the loop.

I don't think Amazon actually had a realistic choice there.

The edition of 1984 in question was pirated. Amazon could either remove it, or face a massive fine for distributing pirated material.

Ah, right. Didn't know that!

Totally agree that the optics on this were horrendous. And Amazon admitted as much 13 years ago.

The only slight thing I’ll say in their defense is that since the uploaded (it was through a self-service system) didn’t have the rights to upload those books (essentially, a third-party pirated the book, uploaded it to Amazon’s servers and then sold the book they didn’t have rights to), I understand the thought process that you’d delete and refund. It’s not like this was a legitimate book they removed. It was literally pirated. Removing books from purchaser’s devices was absolutely the wrong move and has created negative PR for Amazon for 13 years because of one bad decision. But Amazon has admitted it was the wrong move and to my knowledge hasn’t done it again.

In fact, there are a number of books I’ve bought from Amazon over the years that are no longer available on Kindle for a variety of reasons (sometimes publishers pull them, sometimes authors) that I can still download retroactively to any of my devices. So if I’m going to be locked into any ecosystem, and this is just me, I’d rather be locked into the ecosystem that has had its DRM cracked pretty succinctly (meaning I can use my purchases on non-Amazon devices or apps) and that has an insanely robust library of books. Oh, and that integrates with my Audible library.

Compare that to iBooks, where the DRM hasn’t been broken (at least, not the current scheme. Some people have had success using insanely old versions of iTunes and DRM rippers from more than a decade ago, but that’s not a reliable or approachable method) and I can’t read any of those books on my Eink devices, or Kobo, which doesn’t have as robust of a library and has always had that weird store-brand Frosted Flakes feeling, and I’m very happy to be inside the Kindle world.

Plus, my Kindle Oasis has truly been a treat. (I said I would never buy one and now have bought two, so jokes on me).

Can't believe there is such a thing of having an Ereader with ads. Ok it's cheaper but come on, that really shows us how low they think of us. I can understand for a free product but for something you pay ... like seriously!

It's a very clear trade off - you get the device for less money, but you get ads. How is this "how low they think of us"?????

I think this trade off shouldn't exist in the first place.

Why? Do you think companies giving you 10% in exchange for signing up for their newsletter shouldn't be able to do so too?

It's the same thing - you get a discount for signing up to their ads campaign.

Well they already got profits on their bookstore, why would they need to make a version where you got ads on top of that. I guess if we follow your logic they could build phones, consoles and TVs with ads too. I can understand free books with ads but not the hardware/software that reads it.

Again, if Amazon just said "hey you get £10 off your Kindle purchase if you subscribe to our newsletter", would that be any better?

>>why would they need to make a version where you got ads on top of that

Gee, to make a device cheaper for you.

>>I guess if we follow your logic they could build phones, consoles and TVs with ads too

I mean....yes. I'm just surprised this hasn't happened already.

It has - 5 or so years ago, non-smart TVs were more expensive than the same ones with "smartness".

So that you decide if you want to buy the one with ads (eww, gross!) or the one without ads (woohoo, I beat the system for a tenner!). Meanwhile Amazon are happy you bought one of them rather than deciding to buy one or not.

The ads are the front cover of some other book on the lock screen instead of the one you're reading. I dislike a lot of Amazon's methods but this one scenario is honestly a contender for least invasive advert still in use 2022.

You know, hardware isn't free, right? Each Kindle model requires R&D, design, testing, manufacturing, lots of work to product, beyond the ability to show books. Sure Amazon makes money off the books, too, but those files aren't free to store on a server (and the servers aren't free), or free to send to you over the Internet, and so on. Ads support hardware cost. If you don't want to see ads, buy the one without ads.

I know, right? Poorer people should just suck it up instead of having the option to get it cheaper. Wait another month to buy it and don’t offend my aesthetics.

Can you at least upgrade or you get stuck with ads until the end?

You can pay the difference between the ad-supported and ads-free model to get rid of the ads at any point, yet.

Or maybe they could make it cheaper in the first place? They got a lot of profit from the ebooks already.

That's a different argument to the one you were making. And frankly the "why isn't this cheaper, hasn't the company profited enough" argument is never a very compelling one. Amazon isn't a charity.

Wait until you figure out printed books (paperbacks) come with ads too ...

They already do, especially like the travel guides, there are always some ads here and there :|

That was the point. You were being mocked for your naïveté.

They're only on the lock screen, never when you're actually reading. I've had the same ad for years (because I use the device with Wi-Fi off) and have no idea what's on it since I never paid any attention.

Both Kobo and Kindle include ads on their home screen. Heck, they even have complete storefronts built in. While I realize this isn't what most people mean by ads, I'm a bit old fashioned and don't see much of a difference.

If you want something that is truly ad-free, try the KOReader software.

Also, if you buy the one with ads (because it's cheaper), you can literally just go on amazon customer support chat and ask them nicely to turn them off. It's worked for the few kindles I've owned

My Kindle doesn't show ads, because I didn't buy the version that shows ads. I have never had a book deleted from my Kindle by Amazon.

There was a single instance of a couple of George Orwell's books being removed from user devices in July 2009. Customers had the purchase price they paid refunded. It was done because the company selling those books didn't actually have the rights to sell them. Afterwards, Jeff Bezos apologised and described it as "stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles". It is therefore unlikely to happen again.

Given the commercial structure of Amazon e-Books, does it make sense to buy something that gives you as a reader more rights (e.g. when you die)? Perhaps. But I know what I've got into, so has every other Kindle owner on Earth.

You do you, but your stated premise against Kindle is at best a little inaccurate and outdated, and at worst comes across perhaps a little hyperbolic.

>Afterwards, Jeff Bezos apologised [...] It is therefore unlikely to happen again.

If it's still technically possible (it is), it will happen again. It's implemented to be used, even if occasionally. And mere existence of this feature is a clear declaration, you don't own it, you rent it. Many people may find it acceptable, taking other circumstances, but it's a big bold minus.

Just pirate your books if you’re so concerned.

I'm concerned by the fact that Amazon can delete files from a device I bought. How is this related to your comment? I don't see

I bought a version that didn't show ads but I did a hardware reset after a few years. Now it does.

Since then they've also added an annoying carousel of sponsored apps to the home screen.

I've never bought an ebook from Amazon so at least I can easily move to something else when the kindle finally packs in.

Kobo has built-in Overdrive, Dropbox and Pocket support on the device itself, which Kindle lacks.

Pocket is the reason I chose the Kobo, how can the others miss that feature, it's not like people just read books nowadays.

While not exactly like Pocket, there are services that can send web articles to your Kindle. I work on one called Push to Kindle: https://www.fivefilters.org/push-to-kindle/

that's a good idea, you should try to implement some sort of extension to make it easier

Thanks. We already have extensions for most popular browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge. Links at the URL above. As well as an Android and iOS app.

Chrome extension here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/push-to-kindle/pna...

The overdrive and epub support was the reason for me buying the kobo even after already owning a kindle. Still worth it just for the overdrive support.

Kobo only needs it to support transfers, and because it lacks emailing. If I want Overdrive, Dropbox and Pocket support, I have a smartphone for that.

Nothing beats a reading long form article from Pocket on an e-ink screen, though.

Kobo supports email transfers already, if that's what you want.

Just email to Dropbox and it'll sync onto the device.

it also has a (experimental) browser

I used a Kobo for a long time and I just bought a Kindle, because it was so hard to get articles on the Kobo. They stopped supporting direct file transfers from Mac, so I was left with Pocket, and Pocket didn't think a lot of what I tried to save was "articles."

So far I find that for my purposes, the Kindle is way easier to get content onto, and there's quite a bit of content I want that I can just buy there, but couldn't buy for Kobo.

I hope to not get locked in to the Amazon ecosystem but as of right now, my cheapest-model Kindle is way more useful than my old top-of-the-line Kobo.

How do you get articles onto your Kindle?

You can set Instapaper to auto send articles or a digest of articles to your kindle.

There are a bunch of conversion services, some with browser extensions. But I can also print a page as PDF in A5 format and E-Mail it to myself (you have a dedicated Kindle address at Amazon) with a title of “Convert” and it seems to do a very good job.

(A5 because it’s pretty close to the Kindle format and easy to find in the print dialog.)

>Now that Kindle is supporting ePUB...

Kindles do not support ePUB. But you can send ePUBs through the Amazon online conversion service now, which wasn't possible in the past.

And if you are lucky, Amazon will even be able to convert them.

About week ago I wanted to test it, I tried it with bunch of epubs from various sources and only about half converted successfully.

Yeah I often have issues with "fancy quotes" not getting converted correctly if I email an ePub to Kindle. They get converted to HTML entities :(

With Calibre it works but it's an annoying extra step. I hope Amazon fix this issue before they officially start supporting ePub.

Try using epubcheck on those to see where the finger really should be pointed.

There are a lot of really crap "epubs" out there.

https://www.w3.org/publishing/epubcheck/

There's no magic ASIC on the Kobo that transfers the stream of bytes into the stream of pixels; ePub support is in the Kobo software. Amazon now has this support in their software. The fact that the conversion software runs on Kindle servers (and not on the Kindle device) is insignificant to me - what's important is I can have an ePub and can read it on the Kindle.

So long as the server doing that continues to exist.

You have a point. OTOH, my three Sony readers and my Nook supported ePub without any servers, but all are dead now. And again, without that server it's just back to Calibre.

Not sure what to make of this post. You know that you can drop files straight to your Kindle through a USB cable, right? As long as an epub loaded this way doesn't work I can't see how you can say Kindles support epub.

Yes, you can use Amazon's weird conversion service to convert them, but you could do that with Calibre (or just pandoc) anyways, and probably with less friction too.

That's not Kindle's only disadvantage. Kobo had distinct features I wanted that no Kindle offered at the time I last purchased.

Like a screen big enough to comfortably read PDFs. 10.3" on Kobo Elipsa vs 7" on Kindle. IMHO that makes the Kindle only really useful for fiction.

There's also Pocket support for reading offline web articles.

Overdrive support so I can borrow books from my local library for free.

Free Dropbox syncing without having to email everything when I buy a book from someone that isn't Amazon e.g PragProg, Packt, etc. (Dropbox does support email though if you do want that).

In theory I could also use the pen and take written notes on my Elipsa too but it's not a feature I was looking for.

The other stuff you mentioned, like Kindle having a large purchasable library, is also true for Kobo right from the homescreen. They're also priced similarly if you match specs and available for same day delivery from Argos in the UK.

Finally, I know I could hack my last Kindle but Kobo make that really easy out of the box. Installing Koreader, Plato or anything else is simple even if it's not required for everyday use.

So for me it's the other way around. Amazon offers nothing I want that Kobo doesn't have.

Different people have different usecases but I don't think I'll go back to a Kindle now I've switched. Kobos are very easy to live with.

Libraries are very important, and Kindle supports borrowing from them (for free): https://help.overdrive.com/en-us/0431.html

So does the kobo (at least in the US). Kobo devices have the overdrive app installed on them and you can search for and borrow library books from within the device.

So does Kobo! https://help.overdrive.com/en-us/9988.html

Funny you mention this, because Kindle support for libraries was amongst the last. For a number of years after buying my ereader libraries did not support Kindle. They've supported epub since at least 2010, possibly even before.

This was the primary reason I chose a Kobo. You can use the pubic library entirely on the reader.

Only in the US. In Australia, you need a Kobo for that.

> Like a screen big enough to comfortably read PDFs. IMHO that makes the Kindle only really useful for fiction.

There is plenty of non-fiction that doesn't come in PDF form. It is quite readable on a Kindle.

That's true but technical books always felt a bit tight even in landscape orientation on my Kindle.

Things like code or diagrams don't always reformat well and scrolling is a pain in the arse.

Life is just much easier with a bigger screen. Where I'd really come unstuck is when someone gives me a whitepaper or customer documentation that is only in PDF format. No reformating even if you want to.

Amazon used to sell the bigger Kindle DX but they stopped making it. So if you're buying a new device anyway there doesn't seem to be much downside to switching to Kobo, that I've found anyway.

Bigger screens are essential for scientific papers that have lots of charts and other figures. For eink-type screens there's not a lot type choose from. Fujitsu has a couple of A4 size models that look pretty good. If you can deal with traditional screens, the biggest iPad Pro is great.

Remarkable and some other companies have A5 or 10.3" screens but these are too small IMHO. You will still end up zooming and panning.

To borrow from the library on Kindle, just use the Libby app. Very painless and easy. You can send to your kindle as the last click of checkout.

https://www.overdrive.com/apps/libby

It's not available in all countries.

To borrow from the library on Kobo, just use your Kobo. There is no need to pull out a second device.

How does the screen on the Elipsa compare to the old Kindle DX screens? I'm babying my pair of old DXs, and it would be nice to have a replacements.

I can't say for sure how they compare but the DX was what I was originally looking for. Unfortunately I've never actually seen a Kindle DX in the wild and they're rare as rocking horse poo on ebay here in the UK.

The Kobo Elipsa is the first ebook reader I've used where I can read PDFs without zooming, which is a game changer for me.

In general I think DX or Elipsa sized screens are more useful for text books even in epub format.

It's much faster than my old Kindle but I was never really that bother about the old Kindle's page turn speed. The Elipsa also has much crisper text but again I thought my anchient Kindle was mostly good enough.

The Kobo search features are much better. My old Kindle's search was too greedy which made it pretty much useless as I couldn't narrow results. e.g. I couldn't search for "act" without getting results for "actor" as well.

The only irk I've had with Kobo is that the default PDF reader doesn't let you set a zoom level to reduce margins as you read. You can zoom in but you need to zoom out again to turn the page.

That's only a very minor issues though, I can still read things fine with the default margins. Installing KOreader or Plato was as simple as dragging a file onto a USB drive and give you every ereader feature you could want including margin stripping PDFs.

I considered a Remarkable 2 but I'm not really one for hand written notes and I wanted a frontlight, which the Elipsa has but the RM2 doesn't.

I actually wish I could have bought the Elipsa without the bundled case or pen as I don't use either. The handwriting to text or drawing to flowchart conversion is fun to play with but it's not something I need, I'm strictly using it as a reading device.

I'd guess that the Elipsa would be a good replacement for a Kindle DX but that's caviated by how you personally want to use it. There's something very pleasing about keeping an old ebook reader going though so it might be fun just to keep using your DXs until they absolutely die and then see what's on the market at the time.

Hope that helps.

The child labourers of DRC will thank you for supporting their livelihood when you buy that Kobo you don't really need.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/oct/12/p...

For a while Kobos had warm backlights, while Kindle still only had their harsh cold light. But I think Kindle has caught up with that feature.

That’s what lead me to switch to Kobo a few years ago, and it’s been great. Though some small press releases sometimes skip the kobo store still.

E-readers are good for linear fiction. Books that you read from start to finish and don't need to jump around much.

For PDFs and non-fiction manuals and guides I highly prefer a proper powerful tablet with a color screen. E-readers just don't have the power, refresh rate or UX to handle browsing around in 300 page books with pictures.

I found reading technical books on any computer platform to be somewhat awkward. I much prefer physical books for this: even with the best software it's just so much easier to flip back a bunch of pages.

Funny enough, I found this holds true especially for things like programming books where I very frequently go back to see if I understood something correctly, and having a book separate from my computer in front of me is also useful.

Kobo's are like a stone's throw in price from Kindles. Depending on features/market they can be cheaper and they don't even sell lockscreen ads. The only cheaper Kindle is the awful 800x600 screen one which should have been put to bed years ago. They also have a huge library open to non-US people with non-US credit cards. Kobos are considerably better at formatting text with far more options and are even easier to tweak. I literally could not find a font size I liked when I had a Kindle because the smallest was too small and every other one too big.

And Kindle STILL does not support ePub. All Amazon has done is started letting people email epubs to their Kindle and their backend will convert it to an Amazon format. This has conversion warts, means you lose cover support too. You still can't copy an ePub over USB.

Can I ever get a Kobo for $45?

I'm pretty sure at some point the Kobo mini was about that at some point...

It's not like $45 is the regular price of the Kindle either. Camelcamelcamel has the new base model having it's lowest at $70 and I've seen the Nia for $80 and they are pretty comparable.

Note if you email MOBI it might get its formatting randomly messed up.

https://standardebooks.org/help/how-to-use-our-ebooks#kindle...

>>I don't even see what the Kobo value prop is.

It is not amazon encumbered. That is a huge value to many

That's why I bought mine. I don't want to give Amazon any of my money.

I had three readers from Sony (until they exited the business) and one from B&N (until they exited the business), because I didn't want to deal with conversion. Of these still in the business, Amazon looks the least-like to exit soon, and now there's no need to deal with conversion.

As most of the books I read are out of copyright anyway, I'm not "encumbering" myself with Amazon in any way, except for buying hardware they made.

> one from B&N (until they exited the business)

Did they exit the business? It looks like the Nook Glowlight 4 was released less than a year ago.

I don't know a single person in real life with an e-reader other than a Kindle, including myself, so I had to google to see how B&N Nook was doing when you said that, but it still seems to be a thing.

Just checked — they indeed still have one model (not counting special editions in pink) after a hiatus of four years. Without an SD card, sideloading is an issue though.

> no need to deal with conversion

There is still a need to deal with conversion, but it happens on Amazon servers. Which is convenient, but gives no control over the results (and someone mentioned in another comment that it doesn't even preserve the cover image).

The Kindle itself does not natively support ePub. MOBI is being retired to favour AZW3, and Microsoft is moving to ePub.

Kobo appears to be an inferior device on most accounts. Both of my Kobo readers have had glitches, required reboots, and at times had a suspiciously low battery life. The first even just stopped working all of a sudden. But all of it was worth it knowing I wouldn't have to support Amazon's walled garden. Now it's mostly down to "do you support Amazon?", and I'm still not sure if I want a Kindle. I'll keep my Kobo H2O until it dies of old age, then we'll see.

Agreed. I love my kobo’s form factor, but the glitchiness is frustrating. For me, the inaccuracy of the Aura HD’s touch recognition is what causes the most headaches.

Oh right, forgot about touch recognition, that's also a bit off. Needs more strength / pressure than it should. I'm guessing they didn't tune it properly when they made the devices water resistant?

> required reboots

I feel like a FreeBSD guru in the 90s, "YOU REBOOT???" but seriously, I don't recall ever having to reboot my Kindle except the time I tried to open a 500MB PDF and I should of known better.

> Now it's mostly down to "do you support Amazon?"

I don't know if this is still the case, but the Kindle used to be a loss leader. So in theory, by purchasing one, using Calibre only and never purchasing ebooks from Amazon, you are causing Amazon to bleed revenue.

Great point!

I have Kobo H2O and it works great till this day. I charge it very rarly - maybe every 2-3 months. It reads everything I like. And it was one of the first with IP68 certification.

I am tempted to switch to Kobo just for the Pocket app.

I really only have three minor gripes about the Kindle ecosystem... (Which is why I like it so much.)

1: The desktop applications don't auto-sync. (I really like reading books on my laptop because it holds the screen at a comfortable angle. This is especially the case when reading while eating or doing something else with my hands.)

2: Sometimes the Android app is buggy, requiring that I reinstall. When I reinstall, I have to re-enter all my preferences.

3: Some of the default settings in the Android app are dumb, like showing popular highlights. I always turn that off as quickly as possible.

My biggest issue is Kobo doesn't actually support epub, or at least the modern incarnation. Their reader software is woefully out of date and has terrible epub handling, so to get the features you expect you're back to the Calibre->reader loop you're on with kindle, only instead of converting to AZW3 or KFX you're converting to KePub, Kobo's homegrown version of epub they did instead. You can fix that by installing KOreader which DOES support the current epub format, but that again puts you in the same boat as the kindle (perhaps minus needing to jailbreak it) and the kindle has a much more robust community and support.

Kobos do support modern epubs, but for some inexplicable reason, they use their old epub2 renderer licensed from Adobe for all .epub files. You can just rename .epub files to .kepub and force Kobos to use the modern reader code. This gets you a lot better formatting. The catch is that location bookmarking becomes imprecise if you do this rather than use kepubify. It's super weird that they don't just offer the option to run kepubify locally on the device, behind the scenes.

This isn't really how it works though. It READS epub3, but only data that are valid epub2 structures is rendered. To get a subset (not even all) of epub3 formatting it needs to be built as a Kepub. You may be able to trick it with the extension, but there is some syntax difference. It really is a conversion if you want anything approaching true epub3 and even then its as mentioned a subset.

The value prop is it’s not controlled by Amazon and the whims of a tech giant. Have we learned nothing?

> I don't even see what the Kobo value prop is

Not having to hack the device you supposedly own to avoid having ads as your screensaver? My Kindle is at the bottom of my closet for that reason. I haven't bought another physical e-reader, but if I do, it won't be a Kindle. I didn't want to go through the process of finding up-to-date instructions, waiting for a hack that would install on my hardware and software version, crossing my fingers to do the install, at the end of which I wouldn't even know if it was a victory for me or a victory for them that I was still using their product. So I stopped using it and won't buy another one.

The ad-supported model allows people to buy the kindle for less than the non-ad-supported model. AFAIK you can pay a one-time fee and remove them, or buy the non-ad-supported version in the first place.

There wasn't a choice when I bought mine.

> There wasn't a choice when I bought mine.

Ad-supported or not has always been a choice for as long as Amazon has offered ad-supported kindles. I remember making this choice about 10 years ago, and I made this choice about a month ago when I bought my most recent Kindle.

If you bought it used or from a reseller, I don't know what to tell you, but Amazon gave you a choice if you bought it from them.

As a source, here is an Engadget article from the time when this option was introduced: https://www.engadget.com/2011-04-11-amazon-releases-ad-suppo...

You can clearly see that Amazon offered the "with Special Offers" version alongside the versions without "Special Offers". The ad-supported version was discounted by $25 back then. Nowadays, it appears to be a $20 difference on the Paperwhite.

I’m not incredibly comfortable with Kindle transmitting information on every page turn back to Amazon. Always felt a bit creepy to me.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/31/21117217/amazon-kindle-tr...

In that sense though, it's not much different from an RSS client reporting back to a synchronization server which articles you've read and which you haven't. It would be great to turn it off without resorting to "airplane mode", but it's also been a nice feature which allows me to squeeze in a little bit of reading from my phone when I don't have an e-reader on my person.

Except Kindle isn't supporting ePub. You can't sideload an ePub on to a Kindle. All you can do is e-mail an ePub to Amazon, and they'll convert it to AZW3 and load that file on to your Kindle.

Further the conversion that they do is notoriously bad and often results in unreadable books. So you often have to tweak the ePub files before sending them to get a decent result. Calibre is essential to that process.

Notably they don't display book covers for converted epubs in your library -- clearly hamstringing the conversion so folks aren't too tempted to rely on books from external sources.

The AZW3 proprietary format is not something I want to struggle with in my day-to-day -- if anything goes wrong, it's a rabbit hole of reverse engineering. I like copying media to my ereader using cables, because sometimes I don't have a solid internet connection or it just feels wasteful to send a bunch of big files over email (if I'm on a tethered or metered internet connection, just sending a couple dozen books is easily in the hundreds of megabytes up and down).

Kobos are a much friendlier ecosystem, and are what I recommend to all family members who don't want their device shackled by Amazon. Easy to hook up to local libraries to borrow books on the fly, easy to copy DRM-free ebooks from online stores.

I have a Boox tablet myself because I love notetaking in nonfiction books and hand writing my notes in work meetings and journals.

Kindle unlimited - great for pulpy sci-fi books. Some people hate it, but I enjoy it and it's a killer feature for me.

Agreed, "SHTF"/"EOTWAWKI" types too. Any good recent sci-fi recommendations? After spending 23 days without running water in July due to multiple well failures, I've lost interested in SHTF/EOTWAWKI and need to get back into sci-fi titles that I'm not listening to via Audible for the performers (Omega Force, Expeditionary Force, Undying Mercenaries, Bobiverse, etc).

The Kindle I got last year is one of the best purchases I've ever made, I can't believe I went all that time without an ereader.

Having to convert epubs to azw3 is the only minor inconvenience.

Thanks for the recommendation, this looks like a very interesting product.

But it is Sold Out

Sigh

Similar story here. Bought a Kobo Libra half a year ago, after more than ten years using Kindles.

I chose this Kobo for its bigger screen, as well as hackability. It was cheaper than a corresponding Kindle. Also, I knew I could easily install Koreader [1] in it, pretty much the only UI I have been using for many years now. I'm glad I did.

However, and this is important. Though happy with this Kobo, truth is that it feels cheaper. I keep it on a good case, and I use it with care, as I'm pretty sure it won't survive any fall from whatever height I may drop it. And my previous Kindle, a paperwhite 4, had its tumbles, and survived them quite nicely. And not exactly because I was fortunate. So there's that.

But don't get me wrong. I'm not Kindle-nostalgic. I just have enough experience with both to know what I can reasonably expect from my current device.

[1] http://koreader.rocks/

I have a PocketBook, and it feels more expensive than the Kindles I've had before.

The kindle's value prop is that it has existed for a while and I'm pretty sure my 8y old model would still work if I hadn't left it on a plane. So I bought a used one from a friend and that's been working for many years. I see no reason to upgrade e-readers all the time.

I'm not telling you or anyone to buy a Kindle, but from a VERY quick look my Kindle cost half of what a Kobo costs (tolino seems to be available around the 70-80€ mark though and so far has worked fine although the default seems to be some nasty Adobe ebook management software). Maybe 150 or 200 is worth it to you if you use it all the time, but for me it was mostly 1-2 books a month, which weren't necessarily cheaper than on paper.

Are you German? Tolino eReaders are basically just rebadged Kobos at this point with a different software stack for a few European countries.

I can get a Kobo Nia for $130 CAD (about €100), a base model Kindle is $120 CAD. They are very close in price and on the high end the Kobo is cheaper and offers more.

Interesting, I did not know that, thanks.

I didn't make up the numbers above, I just quickly looked at geizhals.de for a comparison - maybe Kobo-branded Kobos are exceptionally expensive here then.

I don't have a tolino myself, but gave support to a family member in the recent past, that's why I've held one and used the software. That one was sold by a physical book store chain.

But overall that doesn't change my main point - or maybe Kindles have gone up in price, I'm pretty sure I paid closer to 70€ than 100€, which is still 1/3. Could be that it was a sale, and they don't even have that base model anymore, but as I said I was 100% happy with it.

> I'm pretty sure my 8y old model would still work if I hadn't left it on a plane.

Can confirm - I am currently using a ~12 year old Kindle 3rd gen, with no problem at all. In fairness it hasn't seen very heavy use but even for the battery and electronics to have held up for that long, often being stored in sub-optimal conditions, is fairly impressive IMO.

I strongly dislike Amazon and its walled garden but I dislike waste more so I have no intention of upgrading before I have to. I mostly use my ereader to read free ebooks downloaded from Gutenberg/Standard Ebooks/etc anyway.

My 6th Gen Paperwhite (2015) is still used to this day! So yours almost certainly would be functional.

I still use my 8-year-old Kobo Aura, it's showing no signs of failing yet.

I'm on my 3rd kindle now and have had all the previous ones for like 7+ years or something before I broke it or an issue arose. I bought a different e-reader between the first and second kindle I had and returned it because the similar kindle at the time was cheaper and way nicer quality (and everything I read is transferred through Calibre). I looked again when I was buying a new kindle last year and it seemed similar that there was no clear winner for what was better than the kindle or similar but cheaper and a reputable brand.

I'd love not buying Kindle if I knew what to get but every-time I look into it, seems like people suggesting similar products for marginally worse prices or its just personal preference of the person with no real justification.

>I don't even see what the Kindle value prop is

The device itself seems pretty good (hardware). I don't own one, but I'm looking at the Kindle Paperwhite now and I can't find anything better for the same price. If you do, please let me know.

Yes, the lack of ePUB support sucks, but you can convert to Amazon's format pretty easily from what I've read.

Amazon gave me a Kindle Oasis (the prize for being a finalist in last year's 'Amazon Storytelling' contest). I would never have bought it myself since it costs €249 (!) but I have to say it's a fantastic device.

It's super-legible, has enormous memory, is water resistant, and has buttons for page-turning.

Other than Kindle books that arrive directly after buying, I send books to it via email through Calibre, which removes DRM in the process. Calibre also did the mobi conversion, and now this step is not even necessary anymore.

>I would never have bought it myself since it costs €249 (!)

I bought my Oasis 2 around for closet to 299 EUR (309.97 USD) when I was making 30k USD a year, was 100% worth it to me while I still had a fully functional kindle keyboard and kindle paperwhite 3. If you're a casual reader, that might seem expensive, but if you are chewing through 1-3 books a week like I do (heck I read 3 books last time I flew from Indianapolis to San Francisco and 2 more on the return flights), it becomes a much better price.

I've been using it for almost 5 years now which has me at a cost of 17 cents per day with thousands of hours of use (about 8 cents an hour if I had to guess).

Actually I had bought a Kindle Keyboard 3G in 2011, which at the time cost $189, so not that far from the cost of a Kindle Oasis today. It served me well for many years.

While it's still working (and the keyboard is so nice to use to type in notes) the plastic case has become "sticky" and a kind of thick film comes off in places. It's strange and very unpleasant.

Recently the battery died, I refurbished it with a new battery from Aliexpress and it came back to life. When the Oasis arrived I gave the 3G to my kids.

I bought an Oasis on Prime Day and it's mostly a nice upgrade from my old Paperwhite. The only negative is the battery life. I have to charge it twice as often as I had to with my years old Paperwhite.

I think we're nearing the end of Amazon not really caring about DRM. AFAIK, the DRM used by latest version of KFX files hasn't been thoroughly broken and it's a cat and mouse game now. There are some less than ideal workarounds (like downloading an older format), but you lose some of the typography improvements that Amazon only supports in KFX.

Now that Amazon seems to be interested in strong DRM, I expect a legislative solution to book DRM is our only long term hope.

Downloading an older format really isn't a high price to pay for getting rid of DRM. But yes, in time, as older devices disappear, this could become a big problem.

The kindle oasis is one of the nicest pieces of hardware I've ever used

I can click a single button on Amazon and get a book pushed to my kindle in < 30 seconds. How is that not an incredible value proposition?

It is. It just isn't unique to Amazon.

That's exactly how Kobo do it too, from their own bookstore on the web or from the device itself.

Back in 2014, I bought a nook, returned it. I bought a kobo, returned it. I bought a Kindle voyage that I love to this day.

#1 reason: out of those three, Kindle is or was the only ebook vendor I could crack with DeDRM and actually own my books. With Kindle for PC 1.17, I can still pull down my books and import them to my Calibre library for safe keeping.

Can one DeDRM their Nook or Kobo files in 2022?

PS: Kobo typography was noticably worse than Kindle in 2014. Again, it may have changed.

PPS: I wish the symmetrical origami cover of the voyage was more used. I lay in bed and flip from side to side while reading. A book like cover or one that just is meant for vertical support is not sufficient for my use case.

If you have an Eink Kindle, you don’t even need to use the Kindle desktop app to download the book files to use with DeDRM and Calibre. I personally find using the desktop app more of a PITA than just downloading the files, but YMMV.

i got my kindle for way under half that price. jailbroke it and now i can do whatever i want. so the value prop is cheap ass hardware subsidized by daddy bezos.

As others have said, I think the value for the Kindle is pretty damn high.

* Works in lots and lots of countries

* Great iOS and Android apps to supplement reading on Eink

* Well-priced devices, even if you pay to remove ads, that offer years and years of software support and are extremely durable/reliable

* Great hacking community and ability to use things like DeDRM to bring your purchases to other devices

* Insanely robust library that is far more consistent than other services.

* Ability to easily side-load other content via the Send to Kindle feature

* Audible integration/sync/discounts

If you prefer Kobo, that’s fine. But I’ve always seen it as the second-rate alternative owned by the second-rate Amazon (Rakuten). If I’m going to get tied into any ecosystem, I’d prefer for it to be the biggest/most active. But that’s just me.

Edit: formatting

I love my Oasis. Only major issue I have is with leather cover I bought with it.. when cover is open and behind the kindle itself.. you cannot easily grip on it anymore since there's no rised edge anymore. If that's the only thing bothering me, I'm good. The only other is there's no direct O Reilly support, so I have to go through shady motions in order to read a book from my O'Reilly sub on my kindle.

A point that you're forgetting, which is extremely important for a lot of people, is access to a public library's collection of ebooks. In Canada, Kobo is overwhelmingly capable of connecting with a public library, while Kindle cannot. It is, in my experience, the number one reason why people around me choose a Kobo over a Kindle.

You can get library books on your kindle, you just need to use a phone app

That doesn't seem like a solution, but a work-around. I'm sure it works fine, but why should that extra step be necessary?

Why would you need a phone app? You can just email them to special Amazon email address and they'll be converted and uploaded to Kindle.

PS: Yeah that wouldn't work for books with DRM. So might be its the problem.

Library books also work on Kindle ereaders. I’ve borrowed a few that way.

I don’t live in Canada and so I wasn’t aware of that because Kindle works in US library systems.

My guess is that it doesn’t work in Canada because Kobo was a Canadian company before it was acquired and because Kobo’s owner used to own Overdrive (before it sold it to private equity a few years ago), but I could be wrong.

Obviously, if a device doesn’t work with the services you engage with, it’s probably not the service for you. But since Kindle does work with many, many library systems (and its arrangements with libraries predates Kobo’s existence), I think that’s more regional edge case and not a blanket reason to use one over the other, which is what OP was saying.

Kindles only work with libraries in the U.S. Nowhere else. That's the regional edge case. Overdrive also supported ePubs before Kindle including the original Kobo back in 2010 although you had to go through the whole Adobe Digital Editions rigamarole.

TIL. And yes, that’s definitely a larger edge case but I would still posit that for many users who are buying into an ecosystem, Kindle is going to be the most portable. But that’s an important distinction for anyone who wants to check books out from their local library.

> A larger edge case?

LOL, you think this is an _edge_ case? Feels pretty central from where me and the rest of the world are sitting...

I mean, I’ve been using e-readers since 2006 or so and very rarely get books from the library. Honestly, they usually don’t have the books I want to read or if they do, there is a many week wait. At that point, I just buy the book myself or I’ll find it another way.

I’m not going to pretend that’s the same for everyone, but I’m equally not going to pretend every person who has an e-reader is constantly getting stuff from the public library.

I don't understand how you think Kindle is more portable. Kobo works with ePubs and they support Adobe's DRM which is used in a lot of stores. There's nothing tying you to Kobo's store and almost every ebook store that sells epubs is compatible.

Meanwhile Amazon has been constantly messing with their proprietary format, DRM etc. Any book bought outside their store also almost always needs conversion too.

Thing is Kobo doesn't tie you anywhere - I use it in europe - I never ever used their online store even once.

Yeap, I definitely prefer Kobo. I plug it into my PC to copy over public domain and DRM-free ePubs with ease, or DRMed ePubs via ADE. I am not tied to any ecosystem. As for the development community, I feel far more secure knowing my Kobo is not locked down. There are no cat-and-mouse games being played with encryption or other protection mechanisms. Modifying the software is a matter of creating a tarball or by popping out an internal SD card and inserting it into my PC (or using ssh, once some initial setup is done).

I don't have to say, imply, of even think that Amazon is "second-rate" to make myself feel secure about my decision. If anything I had to choose any word, it would be "monopolistic" or "vendor lock-in". But don't get me wrong: if Kobo changed their practices such that those words did apply, I would happily move elsewhere. (Kindle and Kobo are by no means the only companies out there.)

Hey, if you’re happy with what you’re using, that’s great. I’ve put hacks or modified OSes on various Kindles over the years, used DeDRM for Calibre, and very much had a solid experience.

I also have a Remarkable 2 and a Boox Note Air that are obviously much more hackable.

I’ve reviewed many Kobo devices over the years. I do find them second-rate compared to what you can get from the Kindle line. That's my honest opinion. That isn’t me feeling insecure about my decision (I am an e-reader enthusiast and have reviewed dozens of devices and have the money to buy whatever device I want. I think Sony made the best devices if I’m really being honest, and they shut down their storefront over a decade ago and barely sell any units now), it’s my personal opinion and I said “I’ve always seen it as” — I didn’t declare that as fact. You disagree, which is fine!

I’m glad we have a choice of things. I still stand by my opinion that if I’m going to be tied down into an ecosystem, I’d rather be tied down to the one with the most books. And where I live, that’s Amazon.

Sony. Ah yes, I feel the nostalgia kicking in. The PRS all metal range were superb (in their time of course).

I'm on a Kobo H20 as well after upgrading from a Kindle many years and several devices ago.

* Also works in lots of countries

* Great iOS and Android apps

* Well-priced devices, and no ads to remove

* Great hacking community (even complete replacement software) and DeDRM support

* Insanely robust library that has never let me down

* Ability to easily side-load content without needing a send-to feature (plug it in and drag/drop, or use Calibre)

* No Audible, but (a) it's an ereader not an audio player (it does actually do mp3s though) and (b) Kobo have an audiobook store

So all in all, the Kobo has worse audiobooks but better hacking and side-loading. Even if you prefer Kindle over Kobo, it is clearly not second-rate. And as for the last comment about being tied into an ecosystem, that's purely an Amazon thing. Kobo don't require that kind of acquiescence.

I am of the same thought. But I was gifted a Kindle so I am enjoying it besides. I have used Calibre to side load many of me pre-existing books and it works well.

Where do you get your books from?

My main use for my Kindle ($99, early 2015 model) is from library systems that use Libby/Overdrive. It’s super easy to check out a book and have it delivered to my kindle. Kindle supports whatever DRM is used to return the book when the loan period is over. And I don’t have to feel guilty about bypassing DRM on the service.

What’s the process like for the Kobo?

Works the same on Kobo - full OverDrive integration.

I don't have a kindle but its value to me is that my 84 year old Mum can use hers without needing to call me for technical support.

Kobo promotes own proprietary format "kepub", which has own better renderer. Standard epub is rendered using generic, not so good looking rendering engine.

I'm extremely confused about this. I have an older Kindle Paperwhite (PW 3/ 7th gen I think?) and when I used the 'email sent' feature I got that mail about dropping mobi support in favor of epub, but when sending an actual epub I got an error for sending a wrong file, ostensibly because the Kindle only supports mobi.

Are they going to ship a software update? Would be a shame if that service doesn't work any more in the future.

Probably because the EPUB file has some problem. Amazon is very strict about EPUB validity.

> Amazon is very strict about EPUB validity.

They're also bad at converting perfectly valid epubs to their own format.

EPUB3, yes. I don't think I have seen any EPUB2 having problem (except if it's missing encoding declaration)

How are you getting them onto your Kindle? Send to Kindle using EPUB does not work at all for me.

Amazon provides a tool that will convert epubs to kindle documents. (Poorly.)

https://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Previewer/b?ie=UTF8&node=21381...

They do this because the normal flow involved in publishing a kindle book is that you write an epub and submit it to Amazon.

Not in my experience. Amazon will accept ePubs that Apple Books rejects because of validation errors.

Example: https://twitter.com/leanmediaorg/status/1547292135963168775

I had this happen as well and ran the epub through Calibre, converting epub to epub. That actually fixed it and the Kindle accepted the new file.

I never investigated this deeper but I have similar issue on my Nook Glowlight. Despite it supporting ePUB files some of them just throw an error on the devices. Converting them ePUB to ePUB solves the problem.

I've learned recently at my new job that ePubs are just a giant zip file of html, css, etc. Sometimes you need to rezip them if they are not working quite right and I imagine that is what converting them from ePub to ePub is doing.

I converted a PDF to EPUB (v2) through Calibre, and Send to Kindle would not accept it.

I'm very confused about what file format(s) Kindle actually supports.

* They are dropping support for MOBI from their Send to Kindle website and apps.

* They are adding support for ePub in their Send to Kindle website and apps, but apparently they will be converted to Kindle format (MOBI? AZW?) under the hood.

* Several sites mention AZW3 as the official Kindle format. Is that the same as MOBI?

* It is unclear whether ePub and/or MOBI are natively supported by Kindle.

If I connect my Kindle and (1) drag an ePub to its local storage and (2) drag a MOBI to its local storage, will either of them work or not?

Short of a software update, I don't imagine older Kindles would magically be able to read ePub files.

It sounds like sideloading a .mobi file will still work.

I did a sideload of .mobi today after being rejected by email, no issues.

My paperwhite did an update a month or so ago around the time I started getting emails about this. It’s been nice not converting to .mobi before transferring (sorry Calibre, I don’t need you anymore) but there are still a few glitches reading the format, especially with special characters. Nothing too annoying.

My 4th generation Kindle from 2011 didn't get a software update.

Mobi and AZW3 (aka KF8) are both at their core Palm DB files. AZW3 are basically Mobi files for backwards compatibility purposes, with an added compiled ePub file for improved layout options. Kindles can read both formats, with newer Kindles using the HTML/CSS from AZW3 files.

As far as I know, the only options to get an ePub onto a Kindle convert to an AZW3 before putting sending it to the Kindle (or manually convert to a Mobi file before sideloading it). And those conversions aren't perfect, I've absolutely had technically correct ePubs end up as a confused mess when sent to a Kindle. Though, these days most publishers seem to be targeting whatever subset of ePubs Amazon supports in their conversion pipeline.

AZW3 is itself one of their "old" formats. Their new hotness is KFX which is some proprietary binary ever-shifting always-DRM'd even when "DRM-free" format. This is the only format that supports the enhanced typesetting feature. The best way I've found to get ePubs onto Kindles is to use Amazon's Kindlegen. It does the least damage.

I downloaded send to kindle this weekend trying to upload file bigger than 25mb tgat I can’t send by gmail. It didn’t accept ePub. I ended by using calibre to send it as email

It supports exactly the format it needs to so that you can purchase DRM encumbered ebooks off Amazon. I hope that clears it up.

For local storage just use Calibre and stop worrying about formats IMO.

Drag whatever into Calibre, press send to device, end of story.

I bought Code 2e from the MS press store just this week.

I downloaded the epub, Calibre converted it to mobi when I said to deliver to my 2014 Kindle. Looked kinda crappy.

Downloaded the mobi direct, sent it to the Kindle. Looks much better.

The conversions are not always quality.

Hmm i only do fiction on readers (kindle or tablet). I guess technical books with diagrams and fancy formatting like sidebars etc would be a problem.

If, like me, Amazon dropping support for the MOBI for at was news to you then here is an article discussing the announcement: https://blog.the-ebook-reader.com/2022/05/03/amazon-dropping...

This is just a transfer feature, the deprecation is older as I was already unable to source the official CLI converter a few years ago.

The CLI is still shipped with Kindle Previewer 3 software. It's still used internally by Amazon.

Finally! Amazon should have done this long ago. ePub v3 supports everything MOBI does and it has really extensive support across platforms. This is HUGE for people with a big eBook collection.

Note that the Kindle devices themselves still do not support ePub files. (EDIT: as of the last time I checked a month or two ago, but maybe this has changed?)

Previously, you could send a MOBI file to your Kindle email address, and it would be delivered to your Kindle. Now, you have to send them an ePub file, and Amazon will convert it to an AZW3 file (which is structurally very similar to MOBI) and send that to your Kindle.

If you have an ePub file and you want to read it on your Kindle without going through Amazon's servers, you have to convert it to AZW3 (or MOBI) yourself, either using Amazon's Kindle Previewer GUI software (only available for Windows/Mac) or by using a third-party tool like Calibre.

Hasn't changed. Amazon has demonstrated some intent to do this in the future though, by deprecating MOBI and enabling the EPUB-over-email thing. The Pearson post mentions:

> Amazon has announced the retirement of its proprietary MOBI file format for eBooks, and a transition to the EPUB format for use on Kindle devices and apps.

which makes me wonder if they know more than we do?

Does this mean that the formatting due to conversation might change? Aren't the features of azw3 lacking compared to mobi: can this also result in unwanted changes?

Yup, less options is win for users! Why not just add more supported formats instead doing mess with removing and ading formats?

I mean, given that Calibre can convert from anything to the reader's native format I couldn't care less what kind of format any eBook I get is in, as long as it's not PDF.

Still it's a good thing to move to a common standard to simplify things.

as a self published book author, i have to worry about formats that my readers use to give them the least hassle. unfortunately kindle is 1/3 of my readership.

Well if you're selling you really ought to provide it in all available formats, especially with how easy it is to convert between them. Should take you a total of what, 10 mins?

Kind of like us devs that have to deploy code for various platforms, which is arguably an order of magnitude more complex in some cases. You're lucky that the Kindle doesn't support 3 OSes with each its own proprietary formats lol.

the devil is in the details. try getting formatting/images/code displays right on all 3 platforms when the test/iteration cycle is minutes. not saying this is the biggest problem in the world, just explaining why even if amazon discontinues mobi i still have to support mobi.

I have a very old Kindle (3rd gen, ~12 years old) and I am unsure how it will be impacted by this. My understanding was that Kindles didn't support EPUB files. It seems that Amazon now intend to roll out support for EPUB, but I highly doubt a model as old as mine will get an update.

So it seems that for now, while Amazon are just converting EPUBs to MOBI behind the scenes, everything will continue working. But if down the line they update their more modern devices to support EPUB and then stop converting to MOBI, I won't be able to email devices to my Kindle anymore and will have to sideload them via USB.

Is there anyone else in a similar situation who can tell me if this is true?

I personally use `ebook-convert` (comes with Calibre) with a simple script that'll capture anything in a drop dir, convert it, and email it off.

You can always convert EPUB to MOBI yourself using Calibre. I often have to convert the other way (EPUB to AZW3) with a newer kindle.

My understanding is that Amazon already crossed into that "mixed" state you are worried about: after a certain OS version Kindles natively understand EPUB (and can be sideloaded via USB, not just emailed). This was rolled out relatively quietly and the Send to Kindle tools have been taking a lot longer to update to support the .epub file extension even when the devices support it. We have something of an idea of when it rolled out in that it is noticeable the current "modern" KFX (?) format is a light tweak of EPUB.

But there are indications that there are probably still active kindle devices which Amazon is converting AZW3, KFX, and EPUB behind the scenes still. I still have a 3rd gen kindle keyboard myself that I use rarely and the outward differences between its OS and the OS on my other two more recent kindles are growing increasingly stark (and not entirely for the better, Amazon's recent cover focus even in list views have made the device's library a much bigger chore to navigate with no more than 6 books displayed at a time in either grid or list views). Easy to imagine nearly as many inward differences, including format support, between the OS versions.

So far, Amazon seems to want to support any active kindles for the long haul and I would be surprised if any behind the scenes converters get "turned off" without notice, but because they don't tell us where the exact lines are in which devices support which OS versions and which OS versions introduce which feature support, it's a strange gamble with not enough information.

No Kindles actually support reading ePub.

All that's happening is Amazon is retiring MOBI support. Since Send to Kindle only supported MOBI, they are transitioning Send to Kindle to support receiving ePub which then gets converted to AZW3.

So the only Kindles losing support for the Send to Kindle stuff is the Kindle 1, Kindle 2, and Kindle DX. Since those ones never got AZW3 support.

Anecdotally, I have sideloaded via USB EPUBs and it works on two of my three kindles. Again, I don't know where the OS line in the sand is for EPUB support, but kindles seem to have quietly updated to directly support EPUBs. Amazon could do a much better job of communication here. I assume they aren't communicating this well because they don't want to encourage people to use non-Amazon bookstores.

If this is true you should report it to Mobileread, because this would be a giant story. I have never heard of that being possible, nor has anyone else there. Are you completely sure that you actually sideloaded the ePubs and not AZW3 or KFX files?

I feel somewhat certain I spotted people already doing it on a forum like Mobileread (or maybe it was Mobileread) and that is what encouraged me to try it as I was fiddling with something in Calibre conversion that wasn't working right and searched for "obvious solutions" one of which was a nonchalant "just try to copy the EPUB file over USB". I don't know what to tell you about why it isn't a bigger "story" other than "it seems to be intentionally quiet on Amazon's part" and I guess it is the sort of thing people just kind of do and don't think to talk about?

This is great news! MOBI and especially KF8 (Amazon flavour of XHTML on MOBI) are horribly complex by virtue of them being additional layers over the PalmDB format, which on it's own is actually quite elegant.

I've spent quite some time on building a fully featured MOBI library[1]. A bit sad that my work will become obsolete this quickly, but definitely good in the long run.

[1]: https://github.com/leotaku/mobi

I was just looking for a replacement library for go to build documents for the Kindle. I have a little service that converts RSS feeds articles into content for ebook readers and currently for them I was converting to mobi. It's great to see that there's an "easy" way to switch to AZW.

God Mobi is so frustrating to deal with. I batch add books to my old kindle paperwhite once a year. It's a nightmare everytime. Sometimes emails to my kindle works. Sometimes it doesnt. Sometimes their official app works. Sometimes it doesnt.

Sometimes Everything needs to be mobi. Sometimes other formats will be accepted but then look like shit.

I love the hardware of my paperwhite and its by far the best ~$115 I've ever spent on a device but getting books onto it, other than buying through the amazon kindle store, is the worst.

I know you and everyone else reading knows this but this is by design.

Amazon wants it to be as difficult as possible (if not impossible) to buy _anything_ (not just digital books) from anywhere other than Amazon.

I’m confused, my Voyage just accepts PDF files, no issue. For anything non-Amazon purchased, that’s the format I use.

It is annoying that other common formats (epub, particularly) are unsupported though.

I wrote myself a tool to monitor the RSS feeds of a bunch of web serials, and send any new chapters to Kindle.

Using Calibre CLI, adapting to send EPUBs instead of MOBIs was as easy as changing from:

ebook-convert chapter.html chapter.mobi

To:

ebook-convert chapter.html chapter.epub

Calibre is incredibly powerful.

Yep, it’s the ffmpeg of reading!

I am interested in which web serials you follow and what you tool looks like, if you are willing to share!

Amazon chose MOBL because it was compatible with the PRC format the old Palm Pilots used. The Palm Pilot was the original eBook reader.

yup, and the original app to read these was MobiPocket reader. Curiously, the pdb wrapper is completely pointless on all non-palmOS platforms, but since it only adds a negligibly-small header (0x4e + (dataSize / 0xff00) * 8) bytes, nobody cared and it allowed using all original tools

I actually read a bunch of novels on the palm. It seems bonkers to imagine straining my eyes that way these days. But I found it pretty enjoyable at the time.

> It seems bonkers to imagine straining my eyes that way these days. But I found it pretty enjoyable at the time.

Haha yeah! Similar story here. When I was in high school I had a Sony Ericsson W810i.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Ericsson_W810

I read multiple full books, hundreds of pages long, on this tiny screen.

Worked fine if you enlarged the font. You ended up with 1/4 or lesss of a page on screen at one time, but who cared. Weeks worth of reading in your pocket!

The Palm was certainly my first ereader. I didn't use it for very long before my sister sent me her Kindle 1 (which she was replacing with a Kindle 2), but my eyes were much better in those days than they are now!

I still miss the auto-scrolling feature of the Palm's ereading software.

No it wasn't. The original eBook reader was the Rocket eBook reader. The books were html 3.3 files.

The original ebook reader was a microfilm machine.

The Palm Pilot 1000 was launched in 1996, the Rocket, 2 years later in 1998.

I can remember reading Project Gutenberg books on a Psion Series 3[1] in the early 90s but not sure exactly when that was, '92 maybe.

I'll bet someone must have tried something similar, earlier, using one of the little Tandy portables.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Series_3

There was the Sony Data Discman in '92, which failed because books had to be distributed on a proprietary disc format, and there were not many.

That took me back on a trip down memory lane... My father had a psion, can't remember the specific model, though most likely from the 3 series, because he was using Palm devices by the time of the 5 Series launch.

The form factor was of the Psion great and I even ended up getting the Sony Clié NX73V more or less because of that years later... Aside from the 227g weight, it was an amazing device for ebooks with an amazing 320x480 resolution...

It's funny, I use a 6" e-ink Tolino (Shine 2HD, if I recall right) for ebooks these days, but the far lower resolution LCD displays never bothered me back then... My phone today has a considerably better and larger display (Samsung AMOLED) compared to then, and yet I would prefer not to read on that; I wonder why...

Uhh…the Rocket didn’t come out until 1998.

Sony’s 1992 Data Discman would beat that by 6 years.

I still miss Peanut Reader and peanutpress.com

Simpler times.

Also send-to-kindle today rejected a mobi I sent by email with:

>>>

Send to Kindle supports the following document formats: Adobe PDF (.pdf) Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx) Rich Text Format (.rtf) HTML (.htm, .html) Text (.txt) documents Archived documents (zip , x-zip) and compressed archived documents MOBI (.azw, .mobi) (will not support the most up-to-date Kindle features for documents) JPEG (.jpg), GIF (.gif), Bitmap (.bmp), and PNG (.png) images.

Additionally, Send to Kindle emails now supports EPUB (.epub). Later this year, we’ll also be adding EPUB support to the free Kindle app for iOS and Android devices and the Send to Kindle desktop app for PC and Mac.

I thought the response was a bad thing, but if it just means we’re finally accepting epub as a common default that’s pretty great, right?

Does Amazon still strip metadata and cover art from user-provided epubs? If they're still intentionally gimping the implementation, IMO it's a step backwards

Not sure about metadata, but cover art persists through the email-to-kindle process at least.

It does on first web sync after the ebook is transferred. It can be fixed (by transferring again) and then it won’t be removed on subsequent sync.

At least author title and cover is kept - I’ve sent few books few days ago. There was a period when it didn’t handle them well when sent via email, but they fixed it few months ago

I hope not. Publishers know that it's impossible to typeset an ePub exactly as you want it displayed since display is under the control of the reader, or the reading device. At least until pdf is no longer synonymous with letter paper/A4, ePub is a flawed format.

And for the umpteenth time, the pdf format is size agnostic.

How is that different from the old default, which was MOBI?

This is a welcome move, but I keep trying to figure out how this is going to effect Libby users (which is probably 80% of my kindle usage these day) and I can't find any info at all.

Does anyone have any idea?

This particular page is only talking about a change to Microsoft's ebook store.

On Amazon's side, they've been updating their docs to talk about how MOBI is "deprecated", but the only actual change announced is that MOBI support has been removed from the "Send to Kindle" (via email) feature. So if you're not using that, you should be unaffected.

Is this to stop users from downloading MOBI files with old versions of the Kindle app and export them with Calibre? Or was that already over?

That process has been being done with AZW3 for a long, long time already. It's not related.

Last time I checked, removing the AZW3 DRM required third party plugins that many people had trouble making work, while the MOBI downloads were easy and DRM-free. But that was long ago, so maybe it's easier now.

Has anyone had any success sending epub with send to kindle via email? So far since the announcement of them dropping support, I've tried but every time I get a message saying the epub I sent is not in the correct format.

I tried 2 days ago and it worked.

I build a tool to send articles and newsletters to Kindle[0]. I’ve been sending EPUB for a few months and it’s tricky.

Amazon still use the old Kindlegen software and to check if your epub has issues, you need to download their Kindlepreview app and open your epub.

[0]: https://ktool.io

It's worked about 90% of the time for me. Basically everything I've sent to kindle the last two months I've sent as EPUB, and most of it worked. A lot of them were the "Compatible EPUB" version from Standard EBooks. (Even though it says they're not for Kindle, that appears to be out-of-date.)

So I just tried Man and Superman this way -- https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/george-bernard-shaw/man-an... -- and it worked just fine. I guess I don't know if the formatting is completely correct, but I haven't had any difficulty reading books loaded this way -- pretty sure they look significantly better than the Project Gutenberg equivalents.

AFAIK when you use "send to Kindle", Amazon takes your epub and runs it through Kindlegen (or whatever Amazon's current equivalent is) to create an azw3 on their end. They are not rendering the raw epub - it goes through a black-box conversion before you see it. Thus, all bets are off as to how the "epub" will look on your Kindle. (Indeed, Calibre does a better job converting to azw3 than Kindlegen! That's why we use Calibre when creating azw3 files at Standard Ebooks.)

I won't believe Kindle supports epub until I can transfer an epub via USB cable and have it available to for immediate reading. Anything else is Amazon "supporting" epub with very big air quotes.

"We wanted to let you know that starting August 2022, you’ll no longer be able to send MOBI (.mobi, .azw) files to your Kindle library."

That said, that was August 2nd and sending that file as MOBI did work.

(And the success e-mail message they sent me today said they did convert the Man and Superman EPUB to "Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy.azw3".)

getting files to kindle for me this summer vacation 2-3 weeks ago was major PITA, I took kindle for kid and first USB cable in drawer unaware that this particular USB cable is only for charging and can't do data transfer, since i use only USB C and kindle doesn't support it

my kindle has no amazon account, because I am sideloading everything offline, prety much not using anything online on kindle

so when I figured out the problem is USB cable and registering amazon account would be too troublesome I discovered you can't send files to kindle simply over wifi direct or bluetooth or other simple way and I end up downloading legally obtained books from my library first to my laptop from where I connected to FTP server launched in Mixplorer in my Android phone, transferred through there books to phone, then again launched in mixplorer in phone HTTP server since kindle doesn't support FTP connection, typed IP address in experimental kindle browser and et voila I could finally see files I wanted to read on Kindle, only problem was despite the format supposedly supported by Kindle, when I tapped on file it shown me error the file is not supported for download through kindle browser (despite supported if you sideload it through data cable), so I had again convert these PDF/EPUB/AZW or whatever files in calibre to MOBI, again transfer to phone, then again transfer to kindle, where finally after tapping files were downloaded and I could finally read story to my kid, can't imagine how regular user would be able to transfer books to kindle without data cable and amazon account and if their transfer service stops supporting certain format then only option for regular user is data cable

TIL Calibre has own web/content server which should be accessible from Kindle experimental browser, so could save myself trouble transferring files back and forth through mobile

Removing support for a file format must be one of the dumbest things you can do in software. Congratulations!

This is proof that we are still in the digital incunabula.

On topic, how does the eReader world look today? I tried one a couple of years ago, and as a person with ADHD I was constantly frustrated how bad the experience was in terms of responsiveness. I can see it could work for a book that you access linearly, but for technical books, where you often need to switch between pages it was a chore and I couldn't focus my attention on reading. So I still buy paper books, because I can quickly flick between the pages and access my bookmarks. The downside is that they use a ton of space in my room and I am hoping that one day someone makes an eReader that I can flick through pages as fast as a real book (or faster).

I have a 2014 model an I only use it for narrative reading. I'm not sure the UX has caught up with the need to quickly go between different areas of a book. But I hear the new Kindle Paperwhite has a really fast refresh.

Full page refresh is still slow, but the interfaces have gotten better to mitigate that a little. I've never used a Kindle, but on Kobos there's a scrubbing interface that appears that shows pages about 1/8th size so you can flip through them visually a lot faster (due to partial refresh), and the page location scrollbar places enlarged dots around places you've been recently, so it's not hard to flip back and forth between a few places (e.g., your current reading location and an endnotes section).

My biggest confusion about Send-to-kindle, is that you can't send an `AZW3` file. It's the format that Amazon uses; it works if you transfer it by USB; for some reason, you just can't send it by email. Makes no sense to me.

AFAIK iOS Kindle App can't read AZW3. It's converted to AZK. Amazon probably don't have AZW3->AZK pipeline.

That just sounds even more curious to me. How can a company make an app that doesn't read a format it invented? AZW3 has been around for years. There's got to be enough time for them to implement it.

I heard that it's because Amazon don't want to use WebKit for HTML rendering. AZW3 is mostly EPUB in different package.

Don't quote me on this though.

Why would Amazon have to use WebKit for HTML rendering? Does Apple have rules about that which apply to more than just web browsers? (IIRC there's also some restriction against JIT, but that would only matter for JS-heavy stuff, which the web is but ebooks definitely aren't.)

I honestly think that Amazon can't fathom a world where you could end up with an AZW3 file that wasn't purchased, and therefore directly downloadable from, their store.

It's sad that leaner and better designed FB2 format (or helped to improve it) didn't gain support from vendors. ePub format is just a bunch of HTML without meaningful semantics.

That's too bad. I used it a lot to produce epub fitting on my old Sony PRS-300. It couldn't parse pirated epubs with tables of contents, diacritical signs and illustrations, so it was easier to download mobi and convert it in Calibre to epub. It worked nine times out of ten, compared to maybe 10% with epub->epub conversion.

~8" foldable phones have eliminated the need for a separate eReader in my opinion. OLED screens are comfortable enough to read on and open source apps on Android can open any format and integrate with any dictionary. And most importantly, it's already always with me.

How many weeks of reading they last on one charge? Also OLED screens ae horrible for reading compared to e-ink.

I disagree that reading on OLED is the same as e-ink, and I disagree with the idea that I would want to read on my phone instead of on a dedicated device. For me, part of the experience is getting away from the phone.

Aside: what's the best e-reader device (ignoring cost)? I'd like to invest in one soon, something robust and durable, good contrast. I kinda like the idea of running open source software on an ereader but I'd probably consider it merely nice-to-have.

Kindle Paperwhite (2021) is one of the fastest E-reader available right now (in term of responsive ness). Kindle device have excellent dictionary too, especially for non-latin language. (Japanese dictionary implementation on Kobo is not very good).

Kobo is more open and is price competitively with Kindle. It's also much more customizable if you are into that.

There are also a lot of Android e-ink tablet like BOOX. These are more expensive but a much, much more customizable as it's basically an Android reader.

Contrast shouldn't be a problem with any recent device. But anything release in past 1-2 years are excellent.

What about battery replacement?

Seems like no matter how good the display and build quality, all eBook readers are bound to stop holding a charge after 3-4 years. I feel like the ongoing availability of newly-produced replacement batteries and the difficulty of replacing them are the primary factors in choosing an ebook reader.

My 2015 Paperwhite barely lasts 20 minutes after I pull the charging cable, even back in 2018 it was down from two weeks to two days per charge.

It's not like you can avoid the problem by loading up on extra batteries. A replacement battery manufactured shortly after the reader is going to be as bad as the one that came installed by the time I need it.

All the other problems I worry about like responsiveness, display quality and defects apply early on when a refund or warranty replacement is a solution.

> What about battery replacement?

I don't think any e-readers are designed to be user-replaceable except the very first Kindle. As for DIY replacement, I don't really know, sorry.

> A replacement battery manufactured shortly after the reader is going to be as bad as the one that came installed by the time I need it.

Is it? I was under impression that battery mostly degrade with cycle count. At least, there are plenty of people still use Kindle from 10 years ago.

> [...] warranty replacement is a solution.

Then I think you are mostly limited to Kindle or Kobo. Most other e-reader or e-ink tablet are mostly shipped from China so warranty and replacement are going to not be as good.

I also have 2015 paperwhite, and 3 days ago I charged it from 0 (where it was for few months, which isnt healthy for battery at all) to 46%, and today I finished a book with 34% left. I only used backlight for about two hours, the rest was with backlight off. First half of book was with wifi on, before I realized that (I tend to keep it in airplane mode whenever possible for battery savings, dictionaries work offline too)

My kindle 4 is from 2012 and still holds a charge for 2 weeks if I use it for 20 minutes a day.

You must have had a heavy use of your kindle. Even if the battery is not new they consume so little that I am not having any problems.

Having said that, every electronic should have user replaceable batteries instead of being a programmed obsolescence nightmare.

Kobo has some fantastic ereaders (and the premium kobo is cheaper than equivalent on Amazon). They also natively support Pocket and checking out books from your library via Overdrive.

'best' is a tricky adjective to satisfy.

I have a Pocketbook HD3 Touch, and really like it. It's a 6" monochrome model, with white-to-red-tint backlight. Previously I owned their 360 model - with a clip-on cover and at 5" size, it was perfect to slip into a jacket pocket for bag-less outings. Sadly ebooks in that size are rare now.

Pocketbook are known for supporting lots of formats of ebooks, and being 'pretty open', but your expectations will vary there, I'm sure. They did bring out a similarly sized colour eink model about 2 years ago which looked tempting, though I personally don't have much material in that size that'd benefit from colour, and moving around text book, let alone A4 sized material on a 6" screen would be awful.

I love my kobo. It's more open than kindles (you just mount it and shlep books over), and I like the kobo bookstore. That said, I had a kindle paperwhite and it was nice as well.

If you want to run android apps then check out Boox. I immediately bought one after playing around with one in person. But that's more of a tablet that can be used for reading than just an ereader.

Can you use Calibre to strip the DRM off Kobo e-books?

Being able to own my books outright is the only reason I went with Kindle over Kobo in 2014.

You can. It's slightly more involved than the Kindle DRM stripping, but it's not bad. I was able to do it and I don't even own a Kobo. I found a book I wanted that was for sale on the Kobo store but not offered by Amazon.

For those who want to try this at home, you're looking for the Calibre Obok Plugin. I think it's usually part of the DeDRM package which you probably already have. I can't remember where I found instructions but this page seems more or less accurate:

https://www.epubor.com/calibre-kobo-drm-removal-plugin-obokp...

There is one simpler way of accomplishing the same thing: just go to LibGen and look for the book you bought. And download a fresh copy from there. That might be the best solution.

I just discovered libgen... interesting.

Okay, relevant to the discussions of e-reader formats: Why, on my 2014 kindle, do MOBI files converted from ePub not support all the fonts on my Kindle? A native purchase, or even at times a non-native MOBI direct, looks better than an epub->mobi conversion. I had to create a new preset on the Kindle for font and margin to make it look tolerable.

Good question. I don't know the answer. I think the 2014s supported AZW3 so you might want to try that as your output format from Calibre. I say that because I've never seen any unavailable fonts in an epub > azw3 conversion.

I asked about whether DeDRM will still work for me to truly own the books I legally purchased on /r/kindle, and my post was removed.

It is infuriating there are communities of readers who are so in the pocket of Amazon they block conversations about DRM stripping.

I feel your pain, but it is still highly illegal to do strip DRM in the U.S. (five years in prison, $500k fine) Sometimes it's a matter of self-preservation, not being in Amazon's pocket.

Are there any good ebook services that sell books in epub formats? Typically I will try and buy from the publishers website to load onto the Kobo but ideally I can buy the epubs themselves without being locked into a service like Amazon/Kobo.

library genesis is a wonderful site :)

Would I be able to just copy a epub to my Kindle Paperwhite 7th Generation? Or it will work just using "Send to Kindle"?

I've just generated a personal e-book in epub and it was really annoying to convert it to Kindle to load in the device.

My understanding is that Amazon supports conversions of EPUB to MOBI through their "email to your kindle" feature. Is there a firmware update planned for Kindles to support EPUB natively?

My understanding is that there was OS version years back that added EPUB native support, but Amazon never properly announced it, it just quietly happened. It's taken a while longer for the Send to Kindle tool to update to add .epub file format support, but people have been sideloading EPUBs over USB for some time now.

I can only find mentions about Amazon's "Send to Kindle" feature doing internal .epub to AZW coversion and I really don't consider that as proper support for the format.

On a side-note: I'm surprised devices like Kindle survive where superior ones like those from Sony perish simply because of the software walled garden. Not a good outlook for humanity.

One word: Betamax

What walled garden are you talking about? I never even connected my ~8 year old kindle to the internet, only send files that I own via USB.

good luck transferring files if you forget cable, see my other lengthy post here

As long as they have Wi-Fi, Calibre has a nice web server for this.

TIL GTK thanks

How often are you recycling books on these devices?

So far the kindle oasis is the best ereader in term of hardware and ergonomy I've used and that's comparing to a kobo sage I also have and to all the ereaders I've had over the years (never had sony but I used to purposefully avoid amazon)

How on earth can it be best in terms of ergonomy if it isn't symmetrical and requires rotating it 180 degrees to change hands instead of just... passing it to the other hand?

Changing hands is not something I do more than 4 times an hour and the non-symmetrical shape makes it fit my hands much better.

Yeah. My friends swear by it, but I can't stand it. I miss my old Kindle 3G with side buttons.

Sony's love affair with propriety formats (Betamax, MiniDisc (and ATRAC), Media Stick, UMD) doesn't do them any favors.

Sony still makes ereaders? Are they affordable yet? Last time i checked they cost an arm and a leg.

Don't know about others but the first ereader i bought was a paperwhite on sale. I.e. cheap. I was used to reading on dead tree and pda/tablet and didn't see why I should get an expensive dedicated device. Only tried when it was discounted enough to be an impulse purchase. Don't think Sony ever had something in impulse purchase territory... and come to think of it, haven't seen anything about ereaders from them in the news in a long while.

As for walled garden, Calibre. Amazon can be safely ignored should you wish that.

Sony product affordable

Pick one.

When had last time Sony affordable product with good VFM not beaten by any other brand? It's same story with their smartphones and anything I can think of.

That was kinda my point :)

> Sony

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

Interesting, I thought piracy might’ve had something to do with it.

Umm does this mean I can now “borrow” ebooks from the library? From the point of view that the library borrow systems never supported MOBI but seemed to support other formats.

There is software that can strip out the DRM, but its piracy either way so if that's your preference just go to library genesis and get the book already converted.

Still not buying a kindle until they retire the DRM too.

From a user perspective that seems like great news. Now I don't have to worry about file extensions. I just keep ePub files in my library.

I'm confused, because Send to Kindle does not support sending EPUB files as of yet. Does this mean a future release will?

One of my favourite kindle feature :) it fits in most of my back pockets. I like to read while on the road, when waiting etc and not having to carry it on my hand which is a hassle and not forgetting in random place is a big feature for me.

Is this just trying to frustrate people pirating e-books and e-mailing themselves them via AWS servers?

Probably not. Most ebooks "floating out there" are already in epub format. If anything, this makes it easier because they don't have to be converted to mobi.

Why would someone do this? Isn't it basically asking to get the account deactivated due to piracy concerns esp given that now Amazon has the whole trail of things you have pirated?

People do it because documents that go through the e-mail thing sync across devices like Amazon purchased books.

As has been said lots of books are already out there as epub, there are many that are already in Amazon's file format too. I'd guess that most people torrenting books are using calibre anyway.

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