When Amazon first announced they would be ending support for all Kindles released before 2013, I thought it wasn’t that big of a deal and was something we should have expected to happen eventually. 14 years is a long run for any handheld electronic gadget. Nothing works forever, and it’s unrealistic to expect any ereader to last for more than 10 years if you use it all the time.
But then yesterday I saw the above image (via MobileRead) of the message that shows up on older Kindles now when you try to download an ebook, and it just lands differently.
Many of these devices still function for their intended purpose. These older Kindles were a key part of Amazon’s ability to dominate the ebook market. Now one of the most profitable companies in the world has chosen to no longer support their own products that were a cornerstone of their business.
At first I thought it was somewhat similar to how Microsoft forced everyone to update to Windows 11, and denied perfectly working PCs the update for arbitrary reasons. But it’s different with Kindles because they were designed with the sole purpose to read ebooks from Amazon. And now they are taking that away forever.
The Real Reason Older Kindles are Getting the Boot
If Amazon hadn’t phased out the ability to download and transfer ebooks from their website last year, these older Kindles could have still been supported today, even if they cut them off from their servers because of “outdated security protocols”.
DRM is at the root of this problem. If Kindle ebooks didn’t have DRM things would have transpired differently with these older Kindles. People would still be able to sideload purchased Kindle ebooks if they didn’t have DRM.
But no, Amazon is on a mission to close off all ways to get ebooks out of the Kindle ecosystem, and now even if you own a Kindle you’re getting closed off. They use piracy as an excuse to keep the gates locked, and paying customers are the ones getting locked out, while pirates keep finding new ways to steal whatever they want with ease. DRM isn’t effective at all; it’s just hurting legitimate paying customers and making it so they can no longer use the Kindle devices they purchased as intended.
An End of an Era
Amazon has released 12 generations of Kindles to date, and the first 5 generations have now been cut off from Amazon forever. That’s a bad look, and it’s not how a reputable company should chose to do business. People aren’t going to trust a company that stops supporting their own products, especially when they still function and are capable of being used as originally intended.
Kindles aren’t high-tech phones or computers that people use for things like banking and storing top-secret documents; they’re simple devices designed to display ebooks. That’s it. Something that basic should still be usable for as long as it works. Paper books from hundreds of years ago are still usable to this day. But these billion dollar companies have brainwashed us to believe that everything is disposable. It’s not worth fixing. Buy, buy, buy. Throw everything away and buy new stuff over and over again. Keep making the rich richer. That’s how the modern world works, and we shouldn’t accept things being that way.
+100
The thing is, after so much of this (see “planned obsolescence” from the ’70s & ’80s), I just feel depressed and defeated. Some things can be dragged out: no one actually *needs* a new phone right this minute just because it added a single megapixel to the camera. But it all just goes on and on with *everything*. In fact, I asked a maker of office supply products how to adjust my battery=powered pencil sharpener to make a l0nger, sharper point. I rarely use it because the point is too short. I rec’d an answer that since the model was discontinued, they had no advice for me. There’s nothing special about the sharpener part itself. It just turns with battery power. But it’s now obsolete so, no, we can’t/won’t talk about it. Geez.
I’m with you on the planned obsolescence and drop in ‘user serviceable’. While I had little choice about that when I got my latest phone I’m in no hurry to jump on the latest (and ai infested) fad; As things are today you’re even guaranteed continued updates on phone for 5 years rather than what used to be a single year and the hardware can last longer.
I never bought into the whole kindle mindset and feel sorry for those who did it was obvious it was aiming to be a closed system from the start and a tool for amazon to control content rather than a tool for the user to get a better experience of that content.
Can’t agree with you on the pencil sharpener since a company that makes many products can’t guarantee and provide support endlessly.
My main use of Amazon Kindle now is only to read KU titles on my Voyage. I buy elsewhere and have been doing ever since they removed D&T. I’ve heard many complaints of KU but I’ve found plenty of authors I greatly enjoy and I don’t want to abandon their works. I wish the authors all sold directly and didn’t have to sign those exclusivity contracts though.
Once they end support for my Voyage, I’m definitely not going to buy a new Kindle from them. I’ll browse my local thrift shops and the like for something used that’s supported to read the KU books.
My DX died a whole long time ago but it seems to me that IF the older devices use the same firmware version as current devices THEN users should still be able to operate them in unregistered mode; happily sideloading non-drm’d azw3 content without Amazon’s intervention. Just as I do with my current PW.
The bigger victim of MAGA Jeff’s walled garden, though, has gotta be their bookstore because I *used* to buy all of my books from that place; mostly reading them on my other devices (Boox, Pocketbook and — once but no more — Kobo): It was fast, convenient and it was nearly effortless to convert those books to epub.
Since they introduced their unbreakable drm, though, I haven’t purchased a single book from Amazon. I’m guessing that I am not alone in this.
SO Amazon is propping up their teetering Kindle hardware biz — reportedly costing them $5 billion per year (together with Fire & Alexa) — at the cost of their profitable bookstore. It makes zero sense.
So far Send to Kindle is still working on my Kindle Touch.
Yeah, but that is not what the article is about. What it is about is that all books you ever bought via Amazon are now legally impossible to get to the older Kindles. You can’t download them directly from the store to the device. But you also can’t download them to your computer and then transfer them to the Kindle. You just can’t read them at all unless you buy a new Kindle. Which is ridiculous.
“You just can’t read them at all unless you buy a new Kindle. Which is ridiculous.”
That’s not quite accurate. As mentioned in the article, you can still use Kindle software on several platforms.
And with how the economy is today for most people, they might not be able to afford to replace their older still working kindle even with the 20% discount. It’s sad. Apple, Amazon, Barnes and Noble cut off their perfectly working devices to force you to buy the newer higher price ones. It is not right. I keep my Amazon account and kindle unlimited for my 91 year old aunt who loves reading. Her kindle has cellular since she does not have internet. She lives 5 hours away from us. When Amazon kills that kindle generation my aunt will be lost without it. Some of the older kindles were very well made. My father had Lewey Body Dementia and finally could no longer remember how he was suppose to read but carried the reader with him all the time, I think it was a kindle from 2012. He sat on it, stepped on it, dropped it and it never stopped working, no damage done to it. Amazon’s devices now are thinner and fragile. Try doing all of that abuse now to one of them. If the device is working let it work and do the things it could do before. You would think these companies would be proud that their devices have withstood all this time. And you would think if their devices are still working and supported they would have their customers happy and willing to keep buying books from them. But more and more they are making decisions on device design and software that turn out worse than at the start and are losing their customers. Like I said before it is sad for people who can’t afford to keep replacing their devices.
Exactly. This decision by Amazon is hostile to their loyal (Kindle) customers.
How? To be clear, no longer supporting updates is not the same as “cutting off” devices or rendering them useless.. My 2013 15″ MacBook Pro (taking Apple as an example) still works great in 2026 on macos 11, a 5-year old operating system. (In addition, Apple recently (Feb 2026) released a security update to keep iMessage and FaceTime working, showing they still care about us users, and it’s not just an accident that it still works amazingly.)
I’m really curious how much money Amazon actually makes with this decision. Like one extra dollar for every billion… it feels like that, and at the same time hundreds of tons of waste is created for purely avoidable, greedy reasons.
It’s really important to reduce waste as much as we can, and with every passing day it matters more and more. Reusing perfectly working devices, cleaning them, repairing them etc. In the future, what’s happening here with older, still functional devices being killed off will be considered unacceptable, and I really hope younger generations will show the middle finger to these kinds of companies. All of them. No repairability and no actual sustainability means no buy. That should be the norm. All those people who are still buying into and showering money into the Amazon ecosystem are sustaining this anti-consumer, anti-user, anti-environmental behaviour.
And yet, sadly, I strongly doubt there will be sufficient customer effects to affect Amazon in their decision, nor in similar future ones. Folks like those here seem to be in a vocal, yet insignificant minority. There is so much wrong here.
The early Kindles with page turn buttons and the Voyage are my favorite Kindles. My Kindle Keyboard and K5 (and Kindle Touch) still work perfectly and the batteries hold a charge for weeks.
Never thought I would not be able to download my purchased Kindle eBooks onto my Kindles.
“Buy, buy, buy.”
Vive Le revolucion!
Although I have no interest in using such old e-readers, I find it regrettable that those who actually still use them are unable to download the books they have bought on Amazon. It’s a bit disappointing. I imagine they won’t have any trouble buying them elsewhere and reading them on those devices, but it’s certainly a poor solution for those who use the Amazon ecosystem.
As for whether it’s better or worse to upgrade your e-reader or to keep using older models that still work well, that really depends on the individual user. Personally, I prefer to use the latest models because they tend to offer features that didn’t exist before and which I find useful, and because e-readers are probably the only luxury I allow myself in life, and that has nothing to do with multibillion-dollar companies brainwashing me to sell more. But I think it’s fine that some people prefer to use older, yet still useful, technology rather than the modern stuff (I do so on numerous occasions). And I think it’s even better when people are consistent with what they say and lead by example.
Are people that poor that they can’t buy a new Kindle after 14 years ?!
I just can’t believe that a device that old still has good battery life.
Buy a new one and you will enjoy a better reading experience, and surely a longer battery life.
I guess people like to yell at clouds on the Internet.
@Claude
No, I am not poor.
I own or have owned every Oasis model and almost every Paperwhite including the 2024 Paperwhite Signature Edition.
I prefer the older Kindles with page turn buttons and for me the reading experience on them is better in every way.
I put a PopSocket behind my Kindle. No need for a larger Kindle with buttons. Reading experience also has to do with a better screen.
How ignorant of you. Yes, people *are* so poor they can’t just blithely buy a new Kindle and certainly not another more expensive brand. I’m one of them. You want me to buy a newer ereader? Send me a check so I don’t have to tell my spouse that we don’t have the funds to Uber him to the VA this month.
I’m sorry to hear about your financial situation.
Do you still buy ebooks from Amazon or some other store?
Can you still get ebooks from your local library?
So am I. With health insurance premiums, gas prices, grocery prices, electricity prices and no telling how much and what other things will go up, it’s hard to justify putting out money for a new kindle when your very old one is still working very well albeit slowly. I don’t have a laptop to sideload books – just my phone, so for Amazon to do this – I don’t think it is right. More and more when you look at the newest kindle prices and accessaries Amazon seems to be targeting their products for the richer upper classes. For older people on fixed incomes and not tech savvy if they didn’t have their whole library downloaded on their old kindle and only a book or two – they are out of luck. Used paperbacks and physical library books are hard to read because of the small print. Amazon should keep a separate software for the older devices and keep developing the newer ones – just let people use the well built much older kindles as they always have.
I heard a rumor and maybe Nathan can confirm this that KU authors are no longer limited from putting their books on libraries by amazon’s exclusivity clause. If this is true and authors take advantage of it than getting rid of your kindle and leaving the restrictive amazon eco system is no longer a far fetched dream for all those who stay because of KU exclusive
Yeah, but libraries still have to choose which ebooks to add to their system so it’s not like KU authors can control that at all.
You forget the cost to the libraries. It costs libraries quite a lot to get a license for a single book, not to mention having to renew that license at intervals. Maybe a large, well-funded library can do it, but smaller or underfunded ones struggle. I live in a big city, but the demands made by the populace for services beyond book loans eats into their limited budget and, so, wait time for the few (even single) copies of a book can be YEARS. I don’t know what the relationship is between libraries and Amazon, but I assume there is some kind of contract because most books are offered in Kindle format (fulfilled thru Amazon) alongside epub, Libby, etc.
My 5th-Gen Paperwhite (which I bought used last year solely to be able to download books from Amazon and transfer them into Calibre) showed me the above screen yesterday 🙁
This means that my book relationship with Amazon is now at an end.
If I cannot “own” the books I purchase, and do with them as I see fit (convert, edit, read on my device of choice), then I will not buy them from Amazon.
I have the Kindle ColorSoft SE, but have only used it a handful of times since purchasing it. I’ll certainly NEVER buy another ereader from Amazon.
Nathan, Don’t you think that the publishers and authors who agreed to list their books on the Kindle platform, have a right to expect that Amazon does what they can to prevent the removable of DRM? It is sad to see good electronics go to waste, but the root problem is that Amazon failed to create a solid DRM system.
And I think people being angry with Amazon because they might not be able to sideload their books onto other platforms is unjustified, because that was never the terms of their purchases. It is tiring to see people constantly complain about something they were never entitled to do.
Amazon is protecting the authors so hard that they even prevent readers from accessing their purchased books, lol.
Those are good points, and I’ve grown tired of the DRM complaints as well, but DRM isn’t helping anything. It’s just making it harder for legitimate buyers to read ebooks, while pirates still pirate whatever they want. No matter how hard Amazon tries, they’ll never be able to completely lockdown printed words—the medium is too easy to copy. There’s already a workaround for the new DRM they’re adding to older Kindles. It’s a pointless battle.
It doesn’t really look like that authors are up in arms crying to Amazon to strengthen DRM.