Standard eBooks
When I received word that Amazon would no longer be supporting Gizmo, my 16-year-old Kindle, my first thought was, "What support?" It's not like the device has ever received a software update of any kind (unlike my Chromebook, which seems to have one every other day). The only "support" I can think of was the ability to send eBooks wirelessly to Gizmo and the ability to borrow eBooks from the public library. No more.
But Amazon was real nice about it. They offered me a discount on my purchase of a NEW Kindle as well as a gift card to put toward buying a few new books. And if all the millions of unsupported Kindle owners decide to take them up on their offer, they'll make millions in the process. It's almost like Amazon suddenly realized, "Uh-oh... We made those old Kindles too well. They won't be going kaput anytime soon. Time for Plan B."
No thanks! Gizmo still works great, and I have no desire to replace it. So what if I can't purchase new eBooks from Amazon? I rarely did that anyway. And so what if I can't borrow eBooks from the library anymore? I've got 70 classics on Gizmo that I haven't even read yet (including War and Peace; that one should keep me busy for a while). Furthermore, I can keep side-loading eBook files onto my old, unsupported Kindle via a USB cable. Good thing there are so many alternatives to Amazon out there.
On the topic of classic books, I've recently discovered a great site with quality offerings: Standard Ebooks. They're a "volunteer-driven project that produces new editions of public domain ebooks that are lovingly formatted, open source, free of U.S. copyright restrictions, and free of cost. Standard Ebooks takes ebooks from sources like Project Gutenberg, formats and typesets them using a carefully designed and professional-grade style manual, fully proofreads and corrects them, and then builds them to create a new edition that takes advantage of state-of-the-art ereader and browser technology."
How cool is that? I've started reading a collection of Conan the Barbarian stories by Robert E. Howard, and I can confirm that the formatting is much more pleasing to the eye than most of the atrocities I've downloaded for free in the past. All this to say, I'm glad Gizmo and I still have a future together—until it decides on its own to go kaput at some point.