Yes, and yes. Not like the old iTunes encryption problem. The downloaded eBooks (Amazon uses .mobi format) can be backed up to a hard drive or external storage device, can be converted to a different eBook file format and can reside on multiple devices simultaneously. One plus is that if you purchased the book from Amazon, you can have it downloaded to more than one device and your reading place in the document can be synchronized in the background, so you can pick up at the right place even if you choose a different device.WildBill wrote:Do you really "own" the download or are you just borrowing it for a certain length of time?TxLobo wrote:Kindle has several options.. 1. you can "buy" a book on Amazon and it will download to your device, or cloud if you have Amazon reader on your pc or other device. 2. there are numerous free books that you can download to your device through Amazon. 3. If you have a Prime account, you can often share books with friends. I've got a couple of hundred in my cloud..
Cons.. you really don't own a book.. you own the download.. But, in some cases, if the book is updated, you will get the update free. I have numerous military books and manuals on mine that I downloaded and added via Calibre E-Book Manager.. it converts most formats to the .mobi that the Kindle uses.
Can you move the file to another Kindle or other device without deleting the original?
Now, that said, this does not refer to Amazon's lending library thing, whatever it's actually called (I don't use it, myself). With that, you can download mucho number of titles, including many big-publisher new releases, but you are, in fact, borrowing them and must "return" the book before borrowing another.
This is different from Amazon Prime's "First Look." At the beginning of each month, Amazon's editors select about six not-yet-released books, and Prime members can choose one for free. That counts as an actual purchase; the book doesn't need to be returned. I always snag one of these every month and, while I can never bring myself to finish most of these, I do find one or two gems each year and discover new authors this way.
A decade ago--even though I was aware of the e-ink concept when it was first developed in the early 90s at the MIT Media Lab--I would have laughed at the idea I would ever begin favoring eBooks over traditional paper. There are still many business and science books I always prefer on paper (these will have specific columnar page layouts or graphics and tables) but anything that's just text, yeah, eBook prefered. The primary reason is the ability to adjust the size of the typeface (don't like having to put on reading glasses for extended reading), and portability. On my 4.5" x 6.5" x 0.25" Kindle Paperwhite, I can balance an 800-page book in one hand on three fingers.
I have an old 1st-gen Kindle that still works just fine but I seldom use, the Paperwhite (that's a dedicated reader and is used daily), and a Fire HD10 that serves my minimal tablet needs (some apps, ability to use a stylus to diagram and take notes, occasional video streaming and audio, and other basic tablet but don't-need-laptop functions). I keep copies of the books I'm reading on the Paperwhite and the Fire. The Paperwhite has a luminosity-adjustable backlight and many hours of use on a single charge, but the Fire has a feature called Blue Shade that changes the display to remove all blue light generation--renders a book an adjustable hue of gold--so that you can read last thing before going to bed without the blue light potentially disturbing sleep.
If I could keep only one, I'd keep the Paperwhite. I probably read with it one to two hours every day.