Ask HN: can I transfer a $6,000 Kindle book onto PC, DRM-free?

21 points

17 years ago

After spending some time on Amazon and googling a little bit, it appears all my books I buy for Kindle will disappear once I throw the device away in 2 years. [inevitable fate of all portable electronics]

I'm very disappointed but as a last resort decided to ask allmighty HN community if this is true.

If so, I am astonished, frankly... Books aren't MP3s, I actually do want many most of them to be around forever. So can I transform Amazon books into PDFs? Or maybe into some other standard ebook format? (I have never owned an ebook before).

Also, maybe there are other big book stores that sell DRM-free books? (although I'd prefer to hack Amazon's - it's just too damn convenient)

Imagine buying a book for $6,400 and loosing it only because your Kindle breaks and Amazon decides to ditch the product a year later.

BTW yes, $6,400 Kindle book exists:

http://www.amazon.com/Selected-Nuclear-Materials-Engineering-ebook/dp/B001QTVXAK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=digital-text&qid=1240809725&sr=1-1

52 comments

52 comments