On February 26th, Kindle customers will lose the ability to download eBook purchases directly to their PC. If you want to switch to a rival eReader brand in the future, I suggest that you use the soon-to-be discontinued “Download and Transfer via USB” feature to archive your Kindle library.
To all the people who are saying “I’ll just pirate books,” you are aware you can buy eBooks from places that aren’t Amazon, right?
Have a look at https://bookshop.org/ebooks You can buy books/eBooks and support local bookstores that aren’t Barnes & Nobles or Amazon.
I’d suggest you download/archive your Kindle books and then buy your eBooks from elsewhere. You can still load those onto your Kindle.
Saying “I’m going to pirate because one specific website is changing its policy soon,” is pretty stupid.
EDIT: Turns out I was wrong about bookshop.org, you actually can’t load their eBooks into a Kindle. You need their app since they have their own DRM. Looks like I got all worked up about something without looking it up first.
See: https://bookshop.org/info/ebooks
Addendum: that specific site is dog shit. Imagine thinking you just bought an ebook but instead you bought a lease to some DRM shit that only works on their app.
EPUB or GTFO.