I read quite a lot—from research papers to books and articles—and, while I love the old-school combo of a book and a hot drink, found myself looking for an eReader. For me, there are two main benefits: saving space when I travel, and avoiding distractions when I read.
Although there are alternatives like Kobo eReaders or the reMarkable tablet, among others, the Amazon Kindle was my first choice.
Depending on your threat model, you might prefer to avoid interacting with Amazon’s ecosystem. Following these steps, I’ve been using my Kindle Paperwhite for three years:
Disconnecting Your Device
Do not connect to a Wi-Fi network.
Enable Aeroplane mode.
Note: If you have already registered your device, you can deregister it from the “Account” section in your device settings.
Managing Reading Material
Kindle devices primarily use a file format called “AZW”, although it supports other formats (like PDF).
calibre is popularly used to convert reading material to AZW, edit document metadata, or transfer it to an eReader.
You can also access the files on the local storage of your Kindle device directly, via USB.
Acquiring Reading Material
Standard Ebooks - An open source, volunteer-driven project which curates and distributes e-books in the public domain.
Open Library - A helpful project by the Internet Archive which aims to create “one web page for every book ever published”.
Let me know if you have any thoughts. Happy reading!
I personally, heavily use Calibre in combination with an addon called FanFicFare that pulls stories from RoyalRoad, and the addon is capable of pulling from other sites as well. Many authors move from RR to Amazon, so you can find lots of good stuff there, but due to Amazon’s shitty T&Cs you gotta get the books from RR before they hit amazon.
Then I use Calibre to convert and upload the stories to my kindle.
This guide is very good for me, as I am also a “book debtor”. In any case, I would like to know if anyone knows of a simpler hardware solution dedicated to privacy (an “e-book purism” or an “e-book graphene”, so to speak). I don’t know if I should ask this in a new thread, but well, just in case I ask here, because it has a lot to do, and at a bad one, I’ll create a new thread.
The first issue of Bazzell’s magazine UNREDACTED has his own personal story about finding a kindle replacement and eventually settling on a Boox on page 20. They are really just e-ink android tablets, so you could use adb commands to strip out anything you don’t like. Though his use is more for magazines and reading PDFs. If you don’t connect it to the internet, there are pretty much zero security concerns.
These large screen devices range from $475-$899 USD.
I have a Fire HD (10th generation). It costs a fraction of the price of a BOOX device, and you can remove or desolder the mic, front and rear cams, and remove the Wi-Fi capability as well as putting it into airplane mode. It was complicated, but you might save your wallet.
The rest of what you said about not registering an account – Amazon has the worst privacy policies, and they do lock you into their ecosystem, by limiting you to their OS and apps you cannot disable or remove.
I have a Amazon Fire HD 8, I will probably throw it in the trash or i don’t what i will use it for. It’s really locked down, and worst than apple too. You can uninstall the bloatware apps even with the ADB uninstaller for fire hd 8 or higher. Worst tablet tbh, I like my iPad anyways. Plus you need a amazon account to install software updates, download apps, etc to the tablet.
