This blog post was written in early January, 2026, and updated just before publication to correct errors and add details, mostly through footnotes. The tl;dr is that I was misled into believing a Nook would be viable eReader, but there don’t seem to be any viable eReaders anymore.
I’ve been using Google Play Books to read ebooks for years, because I haven’t found another ebook reader that uses actual pages instead of an infinite scrolling interface1. I rely on the feel of pages to help me be comfortable with stopping at specific points that aren’t chapter or scene breaks, especially in books with very long sections. For a few months, this has happened on an Amazon-branded tablet – which, to be clear, was only because it was lightweight, laying around after being given away, and could be hacked to remove a lot of Amazon’s spyware and control2.
That said, I never completely eliminated Amazon’s crapware from it, and it was dropped a few times, leading to the state of sprinkling glass dust around and being slightly difficult to read now. And it’s a tablet capable of playing videos using Grayjay and browsing the web. This is nearly unacceptable, because I refuse to lock the device due to wanting quick and easy access to my books, but it’s insecure. I have accounts on it disconnected from most of my things, but not ALL of my things. It’s dangerous.
It’s also distracting. I mentioned videos and web access because I spend more time on it watching videos than reading books. That’s not what it’s for. So I started looking up eReaders, knowing that I should be able to afford a very cheap and maximally incapable device so that it can truly be only for ebooks. Amazon is right out because they do not allow buying ebooks anymore3, 4, and they even completely blocked downloading ebooks in February 2025. Their propaganda is so effective I believed it had been temporarily suspended in 2026.
Critically, the experience of checking out a library ebook is functionally identical to downloading a copy from Amazon.
– VP of Grand Central Publishing (an imprint of Hachette) in the Internet Archive Controlled Digital Lending litigation5
Amazon also designs all their devices to constantly advertise to you and collect information about you6. It’s spyware and adware they make you pay for. To some extent, this is always unavoidable, but you can at least avoid giving more power to the largest reduction in author income7, 8, 9, 10.
The only other options seem to be Kobo and Barnes & Noble’s Nooks. I’ve used a secondhand Nook many years back, and it was perfect for the brief period of time I had it. Long-lasting battery, fast enough, only does books, and no distractions. I really appreciate e-ink displays as well for their low power consumption and encouragement to do tasks with little screen activity – like reading. That said, I try to research things before making choices, so I spent time comparing options.
Kobo devices can only be obtained through shipping or Walmart11, and there are many reasons to avoid giving them any more power. They’re also wholly unfamiliar to me, and while looking up info online revealed a lot of info on how to hack them, ideally, I’d use a device that just works instead of one I have to fix before I can use it. (I also stumbled across their parent company being claimed to be Japan’s Amazon12 in terms of invasions of privacy13, 14 and criminal malfeasance15, so I don’t exactly like that.) Oh, and they have browsers and extra features that can distract, when the whole reason I want an eReader is to have something that does nothing except read books.
I made a video reviewing my Kobo e-reader from an accessibility POV and I had to cut a whole tangent about their AI help bot as it ran too long but it’s my view they are an accessibility nightmare due to the cognitive load required to get what you want. Their one goal is to make you give up.
– Philip @disabledphil.bsky.social
Nooks have physical buttons, which make reading with them easier, and do nothing except access Barnes & Noble’s store and read books. They also don’t require any special hacks to put your books on them. Perfect fit? That’s what I thought.
Click to read the rest of my horrible experience and see Footnotes 😀: Do not buy a Nook GlowLight 4After obtaining the device, the first hurdle was requiring an account and to be online to set up the device. This is nearly unacceptable, but a small price to pay when you never need to connect again to use it. I decided to ignore the yellow flag and continue. It immediately wanted to update, but as I only had the power available on the device from factory (somewhere under 30% – and you shouldn’t trust a brand new battery meter immediately either), I skipped this. It was also near closing time for the Barnes & Noble I was at, and I wanted to make sure it was usable before leaving.
I downloaded a few books from their free collections, and headed home. At home, I started copying my books onto it and charging the device. I found that most of my in-progress ebooks loaded fine, but two had errors I needed to fix with calibre. A couple of them loaded a little slow, but this didn’t seem too bad to me. I decided to try the shelves feature and organized the 79 books I’d imported and jumped to where I was in them. The second yellow flag was that the page numbers didn’t match. Some books were suddenly longer, some shorter.
I’d read that Nooks support archiving your books through their cloud service to keep track of where you are in books, annotations and highlights, and so you can free space on your device when needed (this is misleading claim, as all of these features are locked behind purchasing said books through their store, but this is not highlighted). I bought their 32 GB device so I’d have a long time before needing this, but it’s still nice to free up space when you can, so part of my loading of ebooks was loading a couple that I’d finished so that I can archive them and mark them as read. It turns out, not only can you not archive your own books, but you can’t even delete them. (I organize my ebooks through a web interface based on calibre, so I was fine deleting them.)
At this point, the battery had charged enough I was comfortable updating the device, so I went looking for how to do that. Not only is there no obvious way of doing this, but official instructions online all point to options that do not exist on the device. I figured maybe the online copies had all been updated and the stock version doesn’t have the option until it updates, which sucks, but I can deal with it once it figures out to update itself.
I continued copying in books and fixing a few more errors with my own files, until it decided on its own after a reboot to update. This update deleted my shelves and book progress. That’s a red flag for me, but I’ve been told I’m a bit too quick to judge, so I decided to push past this and try to use the product anyhow. I recreated a test shelf – unwilling to waste time organizing when I felt sure the organization would be deleted again.
I again looked for how to check for updates, and the instructions still don’t match, even though there are minor changes on the device after the update. Then, after another reboot, it automatically updated again. Automatic updates that don’t update to the latest version are another yellow flag for me. It indicates someone didn’t make the update progress reliable and consistent. (It’s not quite a yellow flag to me for updates to appear and start applying without warning, but it very nearly is one, because that’s incredibly rude and does not care for what you’re doing, or how urgently you may need to access something on a device. Imagine your phone decided to apply an update while you’re trying to pull up your medical information in an ER. That delay could kill you.)
Again, my test shelf was deleted. At this point, I discovered my book progress at least was not actually deleted, but simply hidden until I opened a book again. This is not exactly a yellow flag, but still strange behavior – the data is unchanged, so why did the interface change to show every book as never opened until I open it again? It does not instill confidence when a device randomly hides and changes important user information like this.
At some point during all this, I’d noticed that the device was only showing 5 GB available when it should be approximately 27-29 GB available depending on exactly how much Barnes & Noble rounded the listed specs and how much space the operating system uses, and I’d been looking at other users troubleshooting various issues while trying to find out how to update the device manually. I stumbled across people losing their entire libraries or all annotations and highlights after updates. This is nearly a red flag. Fluke issues just happen sometimes, but I’d already been experiencing multiple data loss events here, and saw evidence I would encounter more over time.
We’re on update 2, right? I lost my place because so much shit happened. I finally found how to check for updates, which is hidden under “About” in the settings (which is not stated in the manual or online anywhere I could find – they say it’s under a different label, though I cannot remember what right now). This update system also updates 3 components separately, the reader, the store, and the “platform” (which I assume is the actual operating system). And surprise, it needs to update again. When I checked, there were no updates available, but after another reboot as part of troubleshooting the other issues I experienced, it decided to update a 3rd time!
This 3rd update didn’t delete the test shelves I’d remade, so progress? But I was already feeling kind of sick of all this crap so I treated this suspiciously instead of as a win. I’d been noticing slower loading times after the 2nd update, and occasional complete lack of response to input, but sometimes I’m too gentle, so I gave this a pass for now – I might’ve accidentally touched the bezel or missed a button after all, it’s a small screen!
At this point, if I could replace this device with a factory update version and never go online with it or otherwise disable updates, it would still be acceptable. I’d have an efficient eReader that handles my books, and I already manage them elsewhere. The page numbering being wrong is annoying, but ultimately, I care more about reading than getting those details perfect. But you cannot set the device up without a connection and account, and it automatically downloads updates to decide when to install them later. This would still potentially be acceptable if I could make that initial connection fast enough to interrupt the download.. but there’s another problem – Barnes & Noble advertises that they made a deal with AT&T to make these devices automatically connect to any of their hotspots automatically, and it also automatically recognizes and connected to any Barnes & Noble WiFi. As a result, I’d be essentially walking around with a hand grenade ready to go off any time. If I ever accidentally enabled the wifi and happened to be near AT&T infrastructure or a Barnes & Noble, I’d instantly lose my organization and have a device that works significantly worse. No thank you. I’m not living with that threat. And who knows? Maybe they have a timeout where if you don’t connect to the internet for a long time, it logs you out and forces you to set it up online again? I’m not taking that risk.
But honestly, that was something I only thought of after finding the final red flag. I was still willing to put up with this worse performance until I discovered why it kept saying it had significantly less storage space than I paid for. Barnes & Noble decided to limit your book storage to 5 GB on all of their devices. Their store can use all of the space, but your books are only allowed a small fraction of the device. This eliminates the majority of the point of buying the device for me, and especially the point of buying the slightly more expensive version with more space on it.
I refuse to accept this level of assholery and bad design for an ebook reader.
Footnotes
I want to read “Agency Pricing and Bargaining: Evidence from the E-Book Market” by Babur De los Santos et. al, which is updated every so often, apparently, since I’ve found a 2021 and 2025 version. But that’s near 50 pages long, and I’m tired. So consider it further suggested reading, I guess. It’s about how pricing changes depending on negotiating positions and types of negotiations.
I was initially concerned about the use of footnotes within footnotes making it appear like I’m trying to inflate my reference count, but it really disrupted the flow of reading one of the footnotes to NOT have separate footnotes linked like that. So fuck it, if someone wants to claim I’m artificially inflating it, fight me. I referenced the things I intended to, for the reasons I wanted. If I really wanted to inflate it, I would’ve copied a bunch of them from the NYU School of Law article5.
- This is no longer true, the Readest app is what I use now. It works fast, easy, free, no ads, and doesn’t give my data directly to Google anymore. Works on Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, macOS, and has a web interface option as well. They have an account system with its own features, but I have not tried it because it is unnecessary and it doesn’t bug you to use it in the app either.
- I had to use mrhaydendp’s Fire Tools because the XDA forums were down at the time, so I could not access information or resources to use Fire Toolbox.
- Good e-Reader: Amazon makes it clear that Kindle Books are Licensed and not Owned by Rebecca Yarros (archived copy). While this article is from 2025, it is discussing how Amazon changed its wording to comply with law requiring sellers to not lie about what they sell, and not when Amazon actually stopped selling ebooks. I cannot find when Amazon made this change, or even if they ever sold actual ebooks.
- David Derrico: Are E-Books Sold or Licensed? (archived copy), 2011. This is the earliest claim I found of ebooks only being offered as license rather than purchase.
- NYU School of Law: The Anti-Ownership Ebook Economy by Sarah Lamdan et. al. While this quote is not directly from Amazon, it is illustrative of the understanding by company executives in Amazon’s control and ownership of ebooks. You cannot buy them. (The citation associated with this quote is only in the PDF copy, as “Decl. of Ben Sevier 20, ECF No. 92 (internal numbering omitted).”)
- Privacy Not Included: Amazon Kindle (last updated Nov. 1, 2023)
- Every time Amazon changes how royalties are paid, authors make less money. Of particular note is when they switched to “per-page-read” royalties for many authors. Requiring more surveillance and data collection while also only paying for the first time someone reads a book, and payment being based on “each page of their work that remains on an e-reader screen long enough to be parsed”16 (which I can’t help but notice means that a faster reader will count as “not reading” and thus ensuring the author isn’t paid).. whereas the previous model paid somewhere between $1.33 and $1.40 per book borrowed17. (To compare, a previous method of determining whether someone read a book they borrowed was whether or not they reached 10% of it. At the $0.006/page10 rate shown, this would require 10% of a thousand page book. Most books are not that long. While the 10% ratio was also not a good choice because it incentivized making many small “books” instead of complete works, this is not a good solution either.)
- Authors Guild: Authors Guild Statement on Amazon KDP Raising Price Ceiling for 70 Percent Rate. Amazon puts a cap on author earnings, and also charges authors to distribute files.
- Authors Guild: Guild’s Tunney Act Filing to the DOJ. This is a call to the government to recognize and target Amazon’s monopoly while cracking down on their competitors’ collusion, instead of undoing the collusion that clawed back some market share from Amazon. The proposed solution was essentially to hand Amazon its monopoly back.
- Self-Publishing with Dale: The Amazon Royalty Math No One Shares by Dale E. Roberts goes into depth on how Amazon’s pricing and royalty structure extracts as much wealth from an author as possible. The part that caught my attention is the $0.006/page figure I cited earlier has been reduced to an inflation-adjusted $0.002/page in September 2025. Honestly, I couldn’t bring myself to read further because it’s so dire.
- Apparently this is no longer true. The relevant FAQ is gone and I cannot find an archived version of it. It was introduced in 2018, I do not know when it stopped.
- Rock & Turner: Rakuten | Japan’s Amazon? by James Emanuel talks about the history of Rakuten from an economist’s perspective. While not exactly valuable due to its author believing in rational markets, it’s still an insight into how it compares.
- Girard Sharp: Rakuten Viki Video Privacy Protection Act Investigation. “Viki.com may be improperly disclosing subscribers’ personally identifiable information to third parties without notifying users or obtaining their consent.” Rakuten is a conglomerate of many businesses, including Kobo.
- Security Land: Japan’s Ministry Issues Administrative Guidance to Rakuten Mobile Over Privacy Breach. “The pattern of repeated compliance failures prompted the Ministry to demand fundamental organizational changes rather than incremental improvements to existing procedures.” Rakuten is a conglomerate of many businesses, including Kobo.
- Cotchett, Pitre, & McCarthy LLP: Rakuten Affiliate Commission Theft Litigation: “[…] Rakuten’s use of a browser extension to redirect to itself commissions that would otherwise be paid to influencers who send purchasers to merchants’ websites.” Or as I like to phrase it, Rakuten pulled a Honey. Rakuten is a conglomerate of many businesses, including Kobo.
- Gizmodo: Amazon Might Pay Self-Published Authors Less Than a Cent Per Page Read by Maddie Stone, 2015 (archived copy).
- Erica Verrilo: Authors Guild Raises Doubts About Amazon’s New Pay-Per-Page Policy, 2015 (archived copy).