If you've been following me long enough, you might remember that I've been an avid Kindle user. I'm not going to discuss physical books vs. e-books, here. I love them both dearly, as each has its own place. It's just that ever since I left Japan and moved to a small developing country where only a handful of bookstores are available in the city, e-books have become indispensable for my reading life. Like most people, I've been using Kindle and I currently own two devices; one connected to Amazon US account, another to Amazon Japan account. I mostly use my newer Basic Kindle (left on the image), and it has been my main device until late last year when I bought my first Kobo e-reader — Kobo Libra Colour (right on the image). I'm not going into details about my experiences with this device right now, because we'll be here for eternity if I do. All I'm going to say is that I bought this device for multiple reasons, and I'm glad I did it — I absolutely adore it, and it has replaced my Kindle as my main device since then. I still love my Basic Kindle, mind you, especially its compactness that makes me easier to carry around. Also, I wouldn't be too upset if I ever lost it, or if it got stolen because it's the cheapest device I have, so I don't hesitate to bring it with me when I go outside.

As much as I loved my first Kobo, I wasn't planning on making a 100% switch to the Kobo ecosystem until recently, when I heard about the changes Amazon is making regarding Kindle books. If you are a Kindle fanatic or e-reader enthusiast, you might have heard this news, but I believe most people are unaware of this crucial change in the direction Amazon is heading in terms of digital ownership. As of February 26th this year, Amazon will no longer allow us to download the books we purchase. I doubt that most users will be affected by this, let alone care about it. However, for some of us, it's a darn big deal. And, honestly, we should care about this.

For those who don't have a clue what I'm talking about, here's the thing. When you buy an e-book on the Kindle store, they automatically send you the book to your Kindle devices or Kindle applications. There's also another option that has always been available (but many people don't use/know) — to download the book to your computer so that you can transfer it via USB to your devices. Some users, including myself, like to have this feature because we can not only have backups but also tweak the books to suit our purposes. This might include removing DRM and changing the format of the books, transferring them to non-Kindle devices or applications. For example, you could make a PDF out of a Kindle book so that you can put it into a note-taking app of your choice so that you can annotate directly on it.

I don't want to really discuss the legality of removing DRM here, but when I purchase an e-book, I expect to be able to download an actual book file into my computer where nobody can touch or modify it afterward, and certainly not in the cloud of a big company. Once I purchase an e-book, I do believe I have the right to use it for my purposes as long as I'm not engaging in any illegal activities, such as piracy. So, I've always downloaded a backup whenever I bought a Kindle book, and I've put them into my Calibre database for organization. As much as I love e-books for their convenience, I have never purchased one without acquiring the offline backup because I never fully trust cloud-based systems (and never will).

Now, Amazon is taking away this feature of downloading any Kindle books. From February 26th onward, the only way you can access a Kindle book will be via Kindle devices and applications that are linked to your Amazon account. This is Amazon further locking its customers into its ecosystem by clamping down on our rights. The success of Kobo Libra Colour and the subsequent failure of Kindle Colorsoft's launch might have pushed Amazon to overreach their power this way, but this is a spectacularly wrong move. Actually, I saw it coming when I heard that the newly released Kindle devices failed to connect to computers, so I wasn't really surprised to hear this news last week. Nonetheless, it's still outrageous — It's an absolutely unwise and almost crude direction to take. They will lose a lot of heavy readers as well as loyal customers.

What is more infuriating is that this policy will apply to all Kindle books. I would be more understanding, albeit no less furious, if this policy applied only to books purchased after February 26th, but no. Even the books you purchased in the past when such a rule didn't exist will succumb to this new policy. The fact that this is not properly announced and that many people are none the wiser is the cherry on top of Amazon's diabolical cake. Oh, the nerve. It's truly astonishing.

Without the feature of being able to download the books I paid for, I have no use for Kindle store at all. I don't think I'll ever buy a Kindle book from now on. I'm jumping ship for real. I'm glad I already have a Kobo device running. Well, of course, Kobo itself is far from perfect. I can't deny that its catalog is falling short of Kindle's extensive one, for starters, but that's a small price to pay if I want to preserve my digital ownership. After the discontinuation of Oasis, this upheaval was the last straw for me. I'm done. This is a real goodbye, Kindle. So long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehn, goodbye. Goodbyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Thank you for listening to my rant.😝

Happy reading!