The other day, I received an email from Amazon that the Kindle I bought used from RE-PC a few years ago would no longer be able to download books from Amazon starting May 20, 2026. They graciously offered me a discount code to buy a new one, however.
I understand that tech gets old and at some point it no longer makes sense to support older devices. Newer models of phones have different hardware, and app programmers can only test their code on so many different devices before it becomes a huge headache for diminishing returns. So at some point, you just stop testing on older versions. This is currently happening to my iPhone X from 2017. It’s annoying because my phone is otherwise still fast and capable, but I get it. Apps are complicated, and my phone is missing 8 years of new hardware and is running a version of iOS from 2022.
But books have not gotten any more complicated or difficult to run since my 1st generation paperwhite Kindle was made in 2012. They are books! An e-book is just a somewhat fancy text file a couple megabytes in size at most. The screen only needs to refresh itself at a rate of once per however-long-it-takes-me-to-read-a-page. The one I have still goes weeks without needing to charge. Text is crisp and easy on the eyes, and the thing is light and comfortable to hold. There is absolutely no reason why I would want to buy a replacement for it. It does 100% of the things I need an e-book reader to do. Like, I actively do not want it to do more than this because my Kindle is an escape from everything else in the world, and I love it for that.
In part because I’m cheap and in part on principle, I decided to look for ways to keep this old Kindle working without Amazon’s help. I have already cut Amazon out of my life in pretty much every other way that is within my control. I do not pay for Prime, I actively tell people to smash their Ring spy cam doorbells, and I never buy stuff from Amazon unless I absolutely cannot find something anywhere else, which is rare. The next obvious step is to figure out how to use this old Kindle without going through it’s delinquent parent Amazon.
The good news is that there are a lot of smart people out there who have already figured all this out. After a little web searching, it seemed that the best option was to jailbreak the device so that I could install a different e-book reader called koreader. I followed this guide and was able to make it work with relatively little confusion.
With koreader, I can use a program on my laptop called Calibre to manage my e-books and upload them via the Kindle’s charging cable (there is probably a way to do this wirelessly, but the cable works fine for me so I haven’t realy looked into it). I was even able to get rid of the lock screen ads so now when the device is sleeping it shows the cover of the book I’m reading instead of some Amazon sales pitch. If Amazon won’t support the device, then I won’t support their ads. Fair is fair!
koreader can read epub files, the standard file format for e-books not sold by Amazon. There is a catch, though. At least from what I can tell, koreader cannot read epub files that have DRM protection, including many epub files from libraries and e-book stores. There are ways around this, but the line between that and piracy gets a little fuzzy. ebooks.com lets users filter their search to show only DRM-free books, which is useful. However, many books are not available this way.
Be sure all the books in your Amazon account are downloaded on your Kindle before May 20, 2026! They will still be readable using the regular kindle reader after support ends so long as they are downloaded to the device. However, koreader is likely to be the only way to add and read additional books on the device.
I wonder if all the Kindle owners like me who go out seeking ways to keep their perfectly fine e-book readers working will cause something of a crisis for the e-book publishing market. Until now, Amazon has had such a strong hold on the industry that publishers have been able to distribute their books with laregely successful DRM restrictions. Sure, there are always people seeking out ways around DRM, but most people were happy just using their Kindle to read books without ever giving any thought to the software restrictions attached to them. Now there will be a mainstream interest in circumventing e-book DRM for perhaps the first time. The secondary market will probably be flooded with cheap e-book readers that are perfectly capable with a little software tinkering. It’s $180 for a new Kindle Paperwhite without ads. Even a month before Amazon drops support, my model of Paperwhite is selling for $25-30 on ebay. Wait a month and the price will likely go way down, assuming Amazon actually follows through.
It would be very cool if Libby, libraries or some other third party somehow works out a legit way for folks to read library books on Kindles. Going through Amazon has always felt kind of odd. Now that there are all these free agent e-book readers floating around, maybe this is the time.