Kindle's magically disappearing magazines [updated]

Magazine subscribers who use their Kindles to subscribe are doing the environment a service: fewer dead trees, less paper waste. But apparently they're doing themselves a disservice, because if they choose to unsubscribe, back issues of their magazine disappear from their Kindles.

According to a report on Gizmodo, users who subscribe through the Kindle must continue to subscribe or have their back issues removed from the device "for good." Back issues that had been downloaded and paid for simply disappear.

What's more, Gizmodo writes, "there is also no existing way to transfer old issues of your subscription to a new device before you cancel." Which makes sense; I can't get a free CD of my Hall & Oates cassettes just because I upgraded players. Wait, what? Nobody uses CDs anymore?

Anyway, losing back issues when unsubscribing will inevitably be frustrating to some consumers;  after all, magazines that you've paid for should be yours to keep as long as you like. Then again, for the person who accumulates back issues of the New Yorker in slippery, off-balance stacks until she changes apartments (cough), the disappearance of old magazines might be so bad after all.

Update, 6/19 6:35pm: Amazon says that the Gizmodo account is atypical and the standard practice is for seven back issues, if downloaded, to remain on the Kindle even after a subscription is terminated.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Reading -- a Kindle and a newspaper -- on the subway in Cambridge, Mass., March 2011. Credit: Bryan Snyder / Reuters

Comments

[JudiAU]

Which is precisely the reason I don't buy digital media. The price point is lousy for the rights allowed. I negotiate large media licenses for a living but I am not going to waste my money unless it is cheap enough for a single read or I can gift it or reuse it or let my dog poop on it like a print copy.

[Andrew Shaffer]

Gizmodo's story was based on one user's (anecdotal) account of back issues "disappearing." Amazon's official policy is that the last seven back issues are always stored on a user's Kindle, even if the user cancels their subscription--the user just isn't allowed to re-download back issues after they cancel (similar to how iTunes users can't re-download lost MP3s). There haven't been any other reports, besides Gizmodo's anonymous source, that Kindle subscriptions are behaving any differently than they've always behaved.

[cynic]

Why are only the last seven issues left on Kindle? If one buys a product, one is entitled to have that product until one decides to discard it. It is a rip-off, plain and simple.

[Andrys]

cynic,
You're right. The Gizmodo update is wrong too. What Amazon would have said is that the last 7 issues are kept active on the Kindle and then moved to Archives where they can still be downloaded for a short while if you're not interested in keeping them forever.

If you want to keep all your issues, you click on the option to "Keep" the issue. I have back issues going back 3 years on cancelled subscriptions.

An actual downside is that back issues are keyed to one Kindle (publisher requirement) and when you move to another Kindle, it can't read those back issues as the Amazon servers keep only the last 7 issues and they're not there to redownload later).

They've now made periodical editions accessible by all Kindles on one account (big change from before -- as publisher requirement was very restrictive), and I always make sure I have one on my Kindle 3 and one on the Kindle DX if I want to keep them. Many actually prefer not to have back-issues piling up on their e-readers, once read. I use mine as databases as I can search news topics on the Kindle and find them in the various newspapers and magazines.

[Dave]

Just a reason not to subscribe in the first place.

[alekesam]

Until the publishers (and ebook reader companies) get it into their head that when someone pays for something, they have a right to do with their bought books, mags, etc whatever the heck they want with it because they purchased it, same as print, including the ability to move my items from one e-reader to the next. No one wants to have to buy two different e-readers just to be able to read and keep all of their items.

[Joel]

Your librarian says: Use an e-book reader that has the ePub or .pdf standard. The Kindle may seem cute now, but so did Betamax in the late '70s...