Overview
- Older Kindles and early Fire tablets, which lose Kindle Store purchasing, borrowing, and downloads Wednesday, will still open books already on the device.
- Models released in 2012 or earlier are covered, including Kindle 1–5, Keyboard, Touch, first‑gen Paperwhite, DX models, and first‑ and second‑gen Fire and Fire HD tablets, with Fire tablets keeping other non‑book services.
- Amazon is emailing affected customers with about 20% off newer Kindles and small e‑book credits, and it says libraries remain available through the free Kindle apps and the web.
- Owners are stockpiling titles, switching off Wi‑Fi, and turning to sideloading or jailbreaking to keep reading, though Amazon warns these hacks can break devices and may violate its terms.
- Amazon says about 3% of active users are impacted, while repair advocates warn the move could leave millions of devices unused and add significant electronic waste.