In the past year I’ve gone in the opposite direction. I have hundreds of books on Kindle, but now I rarely purchase for Kindle, and buy most books from the Books store. I enjoy the reading experience with Books more than Kindle. I’ve also accumulated a lot of ePubs here and there in the past year, which work better for me on Books.
I have information from a reliable source that Epubor Ultimate works quite well on the Mac for removing DRM from purchased Kindle books, and is far easier to use on current Macs than the calibre plugin, which (I’m told) required an older version of calibre and an older version of the Kindle app for the Mac to work.
I’m not aware of any similar tool for removing DRM from books purchased from the iOS Books application, so I would recommend trying out Epubor. One minor bit of caution: it is not a pretty app, but it does work. I’m told.
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I too prefer the reading experience in Books but, and I may be missing this, I don’t think Books has the ability to download highlights and notes like one can on Amazon. I use this feature all the time to import all of my notes and annotations into DEVONthink. Have I missed this feature in Books?
The Calibre plugin does indeed require an older version of Calibre.
I can’t speak to the Mac app, but the plugin works fine with the SN of an e-ink Kindle.
“which (I’m told) required an older version of calibre and an older version of the Kindle app for the Mac to work.”
I assume we are still talking about Kindle books. There is a version 7 of the plugin, which works hunky dory with Calibre 5… so I’m told…
You can export all notes/highlights by sending a consolidated list to yourself via Mail. See here for info
Or, notes can be shared one-by-one to other apps.
So — possible but not pleasant.
For the most part I agree, but Apple developer documentation is essential for me and it’s only available in Books AFAIK.
I chose Amazon and the Kindle for some of the same reasons. A larger selection of books, the ability to loan and/or borrow books from friends, more integration with 3rd party apps, etc.
But the main reason is the Kindle is cross platform. My library cost more than my Apple devices and if my requirements should change I don’t want everything locked in Apple’s garden.
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Good for folks to know! I just checked, and it appears to be a pre-release version. It looks like there are a couple of nice new features in Calibre 5, so those who use it for purposes beyond book storage/cataloguing will no doubt be pleased about the new version.
Amazon’s garden is safer?
I suspect that Amazon’s garden is “safer” at least in the sense that:
- it’s a core part of their business
- they are less likely to wake up one day and decide to get out of the ebook business than Apple
- they have apps for platforms beyond what they own
- “let’s put the Kindle app on more devices because it’ll sell more books” seems like it’ll get a better response than “Let’s try to put the Apple Book Store on other devices because maybe it’ll sell more books?” (See also: cross-platform iMessage)
I can’t speak fir @WayneG but I would say yes in so far as the Kindle app works cross platforms whereas Apple’s is locked within the Apple’s ecosystem. I am completely in the Apple system but I want my books to be as portable as possible. The same goes for my files, which increasingly are in markdown.
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Yes. In that it doesn’t require buying Apple hardware to access my library.
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Does anyone have any experience with TunesKit iBook Copy (at tuneskit.com)? The website made me a little uneasy for some reason.
Ultimately (and unfortunately) this all led nowhere. Very frustrating 
Thanks to all who tried to help.
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Did you decide against Epubor because of the cost, or not wanting to remove DRM, or something else…?
Just curious what you were hoping for vs what was recommended…although I’m not sure I have another idea to recommend.
I couldn’t get Epubor to work with current Kindle content. The website seems to concur.
Calibre with the dedrm plug in works fine for me, using my kindle, or my kindle app or adobe digital…
I couldn’t get that to work either. Are you using Calibre 5.x ?