Kindle 1.16.0 stopped working, latest version 1.30.0 works (with a workaround)

[salty-horse]

In the past few days, Kindle 1.16.0 keeps giving me "Unable to connect" errors. I haven't tested it on Windows, but I'm assuming this might mean Amazon has shut down or changed the endpoints that it used to communicate. Of course, it might be a temporary issue.

The latest version, 1.30.0 (KindleForPC-installer-1.30.59056.exe), works fine.

The only issue it has is that the program launches at startup (and the installer crashes at the end). This can be bypassed by making sure this directory exists beforehand: $WINEPREFIX/drive_c/users/$USER/AppData/Local/Amazon/Kindle/crashdump.

I have described the issue here in the Wine AppDB, along with a link to the bug report that explains the problem and the workaround.

One thing that might affect users is that the newer versions of Kindle for PC use a different file format for ebooks, although it's possible to revert it back to the old format with some fiddling.