So deep into e-readers my loved ones are worried about me

An introduction to my present insanity

Believe it or not, the entire reason I made this site and wrote all this stuff is because I'm currently down an e-reader rabbit hole. I've bought a bunch of different e-reader devices, dug up my old Kindles, played with Kindle jailbreaking, Kobo hacking, and Android app beta testing. I've joined 4 Discord communities, setup dedicated servers, email, and social media accounts, and talked, or typed, everyone I know to death about e-readers and e-books for the past month.

And it's all Jeff Bezos' fault.

On my mission to decrease the time, data, and money I'm giving to our current tech overlords I turned my attention to Amazon. Not only was I deepest into that ecosystem, but it also turned out to be the easiest one to rid myself of. I can't do anything about using AWS at work or how they run a huge chunk of the internet, but I can stop giving Bezos any of my direct personal time and money. The problem was, I love reading and I loved the Kindle ecosystem.

My two older Kindles are the original Kindle Touch (the one with a speaker and all that), and a Kindle Voyage. I'd also had a Kindle Keyboard way back when but I sold that one to a friend a long time ago.

I used my Kindle Touch a lot at university but the battery life started to dwindle on me after half a decade or so. I wasn't reading for pleasure as frequently for a bit so there were long periods between charges and every time I'd go to pick it up it would be dead. Then it would take what felt like ten thousand years to recharge. It was easier to just pick up a physical book, which I had ample opportunity to do at my local library. Plus, I'm more of a night reader and the lack of a backlit screen, a feature that annoyingly came out in the next model, meant I was never fully satisfied with it.

So when my friend asked whether I'd be interested in their lovely sleek little Kindle Voyage with a nice backlit screen, I basically bit their hand off. With it's significantly slimmed down design and slightly more tactile page press sensors, the Kindle Voyage felt like a nice upgrade to my clunky Kindle Touch. I also never used the experimental MP3 player and super quiet speakers of my Kindle Touch anyway, so not having that feature wasn't a dealbreaker. Of course it was just after I parted with my money that Amazon announced the new waterproof Kindle Paperwhite. When will I learn?

My Kindle Voyage was lovely. The backlight and more lightweight design, were total game changers for me. But at this point in my life I was going out a lot more and I lived in a particularly rainy part of the world, so I was constantly paranoid I was going to ruin my Kindle. I ended up adding a waterproof bag to the inside of my rucksack just in case after it got soaked through one too many times. I don't have a car so getting from A to B required walking through heavy sideways rain a fair few times, and I'd be paranoid that my waterproof inner bag wouldn't be enough to keep the contents of my poor drenched rucksack dry. To top it all off I was living in a flat with a really nice bath which would have been lovely to read in, making a waterproof Kindle more and more desirable.

Eventually I decided to give in and buy a waterproof, backlit Kindle Paperwhite with USB-C. I loved it. And I absolutely steamed through books. I loved being able to put my e-reader down and pick up where I left off on my phone. I loved being able to do the same with audiobooks occassionally between my Kindle e-book and my Audible audiobook copies. I could even fit my Paperwhite in my, admittedly rather generous, pockets.

And then Bezos had to go and kiss the ring.

I'd furrowed my brow at the worker's rights and safety abuses over the years. I'd bit my lip over the blatantly exploitative tax avoidance when it popped up in the news. I'd tried not to look directly at the stranglehold of Amazon over global e-commerce and its effects on our highstreets when I hit "Buy Now". All the while convincing myself that it's not like I could do anything about any of it, so I might as well benefit from the convenience.

I guess I draw the line at trying to roll back civil rights.

It's scary to realise he had to go this far before I was willing to cut loose from my complicity in his wealth, but better late than never.

So how did I do it?

I've already gone over some of the switch outs and cancellations I made previously, so this is mostly the start of my journey into the world of e-readers and e-books outside of Amazon. And it's not great news folks.

I have tried out:

• 6 different non-Kindle brands (Kobo, Boox, Meebook, PocketBook, Tolino and Bigme)
• 9 different non-Kindle e-readers (Kobo Clara Colour, Kobo Libra Colour, Onyx Boox Go Color 7, Meebook M6C, PocketBook Verse Pro Colour, Tolino Shine 4, Bigme Read, and Pocketnote Colour B751C)
• 9 different e-reading apps (the reading apps for the ereader brands, BookFusion, KOReader, and FBReader)
• 9 different ways of wirelessly syncing sideloaded e-books (Koblime, KoboCloud, Calibre wireless device connection, Calibre-web OPDS, Google Drive integrations, Boox and Meebook wifi drop, PocketBook Cloud, Tolino Cloud, and BookFusion)
• 5 different investigations into open source projects for e-ink reading (QuillOS or InkBox, Kdroid, fread.ink, The Open Book Project, and PineNote)
• 4 different ways of hosting my ebook library (Google Drive, Calibre-web, Kavita, and BookFusion)

My brain is constantly cycling through all this data without a satisfying resolution. But I do have a conclusion from all this: Amazon are not the best, they're just the only game in town. Strangling innovation in the crib turns out to be an extremely lucrative strategy when you own most of an emerging market.

Unsurprisingly, I have too much to say about all this to fit it all into one post, so this will be some kind of series.

I'll be trying out alternative walled garden e-readers and what they do and don't offer. I'll also be taking a look at Android e-readers. These make claims about being more open for readers, but I want to investigate how true that really is.

These will probably look something like reviews; assessing how close the reading experience is to my Kindle, what the build quality is like, and how close to checking all my boxes each device is. I also want to have a look at the companies behind these e-readers, as well as what options there are for a seamless reading experience if you want to get away from Amazon.

I'll also be getting stuck in to some deeper dives on some of my favourite finds on this journey, some of the frustrations, and what I think this all says about the state of modern technology. If you fancy joining me on this mad ramble, stay tuned...