Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

I know this is the wrong /c/ for this, but.. your local library probably has tons of content you can check out on your Kindle for free.

I know this isn't what you're asking for but the kobo H2O is what I use and it's fantastic. It's not sucked into Amazon's shitty ecosystem and right out of the box it works for loading pirated content. I get all my books from the zlibrary onion site and you literally drag and drop files into the file folder. It's e-ink so the battery lasts forever, it gets super bright for outside reading, and it's waterproof. I can't speak to modding but I haven't bought a book since 2020 because of it and I honestly prefer it to most physical books at this point

You don't need to crack anything, pirate your ebooks (I've recently had good results from annas-archive.org for fiction books) and send them to kindle as personal documents.

Buy any kindle you prefer. Install calibre. Connect USB cable between kindle and computer.

Done.

Now download ebooks from anywhere, import into calibre and sync to your Kindle.

I have the paper white touch screen one.

After initially setting up your kindle, just keep it in airplane mode. Upload new books with calibre

You can sideload on to any kindle.

Paperwhite (non-SE) is the version to go for. They go on sale every month or two, check camelcamelcamel.

https://singlelogin.re/
https://calibre-ebook.com/

Have fun.

Every single Kindle supports sideloading books via USB, or even, you can send non-legally obtained books OTA via the Amazon email on your kindle (yes, if you have a Amazon account you can have your device Linked to an @kindle.com mail address).

But, be worry about some issues. Be sideloading or emailing, Kindle devices natively don't support ePub books. So, if you sideload via USB you WILL need to convert the books to some format like .mobi or .azw3 to be able to read it on the Kindle.

On the other side, if you email the files, Amazon servers do the converting for you, so you can easily send epub files and the Kindle servers adjust the ebook, you just need to have your Kindle connected to WiFi.

I don't think any particular kindle needs to be cracked or modded, you just have to pirate the files and make them compatible with software like calibre then put them on your kindle that way. Same with stuff like kobo. I downloaded a bunch of stuff into my kobo glow to read on planes or during long trips when I don't wanna drain my phone battery.

Yes, it's super easy. Amazon has an email address for your kindle, all you need to do is email the epub or pdf and it shows up on the kindle automatically. This is the first guide I found on Google. https://www.howtogeek.com/798894/how-to-transfer-epub-to-kindle/

They should all be the same, right?

And besides, there isn't much you can do with jailbreaking. Kindles already support sideloading books, fonts and dictionaries, and the two links the other guy posted are all you really need to start pirating ebooks. The devices themselves are so weak that you really can't do anything other than read books on them. Kindles nowadays also support book cover screensavers, which was a big reason to jailbreak in the past (apparently). That should tell you about the kind of functionality jailbreaking gives you.

I will say that if you end up buying a Kindle, you should install the KFX plugins for Calibre, they're the proprietary format that Kindle store-bought ebooks come in. The Kobo equivalent is Kepub.

I own both a Kindle Basic 10 and a Kobo Clara HD.

Both devices can sideload books just fine out of the box, and you will be able to read them without having to do any hacks or jailbreaks. The easiest way to sideload and keep track of your books is using Calibre on a computer.

But I will say that the sideloading experience of the two devices are night and day.

Kindles are very clearly built to funnel you into the Amazon book store. Buying books from Amazon is smooth and easy.

For sideloading on Kindles you must convert to mobi, azw, azw3 or kfx. All of these have different feature support. So if you want Book covers, the updated layout engine and typesetting, then you must use kfx. But Calibre can't natively convert to kfx. So you will need to install amazons ebook previewer and a plugin in Calibre to make Calibre convert to kfx via the amazon ebook preview application. Each conversion takes roughly 2 minutes, and randomly fails for no apparent reason.

If you decide to use Kindles' email option for sideloading, then your books will be converted to mobi, so you lose out on a lot of features. And the kindle sees the books as documents, not books.

If you sideload with Calibre and try to upload books with book covers, then it will work fine, and for a couple of seconds after uploading the book it will work fine. Then the Kindle will realize that should definitely look up the book cover om Amazon, and if it finds the book if will overwrite your book cover, if not it will replace it with a blank page. You can then reconnect your Kindle to Calibre and Calibre will fix your book covers properly. But if your Kindle is able to look up the book on Amazon it will continue to overwrite your book cover.

Finally the organization of sideloaded books sucks on Kindle. If you sideload via email, then you can organized the books through Amazon's website. If you sideload with Calibre you can't, and your only option is to manually organized your books into folders on the device one by one. This is extremely slow and tedious.

Sideloading books on a Kobo can't be done via e-mail, but Kobo supports epub out of the box, which most ebook are. If you want the books to load and navigate faster, you can convert to kepub, this requires a plugin for Calibre, but no additional software. Each book conversion takes 2-3 seconds, and the book arrives on your Kobo with a functioning book cover, full functionality and zero fuss. Additionally Kobos automatically organize books into folders based on both author and series based on your metadata in Calibre, making it a breeze to organize your entire library on your computer and just transfer things, already organized, to your kobo. Kobos also has an additional section called "Collections" which you can map to any field in Calibre you like. I have mapped mine to a Genre field, but you could organize stuff by anything you want.

So if you are planning to primarily sideload books, I would strongly encourage you to look at a Kobo instead of a Kindle.

Owner of a paper white. I usually read manga so it's kinda cumbersome to export the pages from Tachiyomi and convert it into an ebook format.

To download ebooks I usually visit z-library or something similar. If it's not there: Time for research into the depths of the internet!

Calibre with the DeDRM plug-in, then “borrow” books from Overdrive.

Calibre can also convert other formats into the format used by Kindle.

You can use a kindle with non-drm ebooks without any major work, jailbreak and root not required, just drop them into the right folder on the device via USB, if they aren't supported then Calibre can convert them.

OR look at any of the dozens of non-kindle e-readers out there that are more open, Personally I have an Onyx Boox Note3, it's a bit older now but works beautifully for all formats of text, comics, manga, and as a general android tablet.

As others have mentioned, Kobo is a good device, especially if you use and are familiar with a Linux desktop and command line, as this can circumvent sign up while still getting updates. Discussed here:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=171664

Then it's just a quick visit over to oceanofpdf (or wherever you can find pdf/epub books). Download book, mount the Kobo, copy the book file, unmount, and enjoy!

I am using a Tolino Vision 6 and I am very happy with it. No cracking or modding neccessary. All my ebooks are synced with Calibre, it recognizes the device without a problem. I wouldn't want to support amazon if I can avoid it.

Free ebooks at my town: borrow an ebook at the local library and convert it with https://www.acsmconverter.com/ from the .acsm format to epub. Although it doesn't work all the time..

If anyone knows a more reliable way to convert from acsm, please let me know.

You only need calibre and it handles everything for you.

An issue you may run into is light gray font, which is easily solved

https://lemmy.world/post/1812376

Vpn, Calibre, and myanonymouse are all you need.

Maybe an oxford comma. Maybe not, it's your choice.

Honestly I don't even bother with the cracks and whatnot. I have a burner Amazon that could get nuked and I wouldn't be sad and I use the send to kindle email to send epub files to that account using kavita and OpenBooks docker containers.