Amazon ends e-book downloads

- 4 mins read

Amazon starts to crack down even more on eBook DRM.

Chained book

One of the biggest problems people have with DRM (Digital Rights Management) on eBooks is that is can severely limit the possible ways you can read the stories you purchased. If you buy an eBook on Amazon, and play by the rules, you can only read that on Kindle devices, or authorised Kindle apps on phones, tablets and computers. Forget it, if you have a Kobo reader, or a PocketBook, you simply can’t copy the book on there and read it. And there is an additional problem. With the Kindle devices synchronising as a nice obedient servant to Amazon’s will, Amazon can even delete content that you purchased, from your device. As if you never bought it at all. “Surely, they won’t do that!”, you say? Well.. They already did.

Up until recently, there were some ways around this:

  • After purchasing an eBook, you have the option to download the (encrypted) file to your computer, and then upload it to your Kindle device by USB. Since this method had to take into account the usage of older Kindle devices, the encryption scheme used here is outdated, and tools are available to remove the DRM encryption entirely from that file, usually of the .azw3 format. With the popular Calibre library management software, and the DeDRM import tools, it was possible to load an unencrypted copy of the book into Calibre, and from there copy it onto your e-reader of choice. This however, does require you to at least have a Kindle device, since the DRM encryption keys depend on the serial number of the device you want to download it for. It doesn’t need to work anymore though, if you once registered it and it’s still associated with your account, you can download books with that Kindles’ key. (You do need to know the serial number of that Kindle though, since the DeDRM tools need it.)
  • Older versions of the Kindle applications for Window s & MacOS were also limited to that older encryption scheme. You could use the DeDRM tools to retrieve the key the application used, and use that to decrypt the files and store them in Calibre. However, a few years ago Amazon blocked the usage of the older applications for newly released books, and downloads were no longer possible. More recently, the entire use of the older applications has been blocked.

And now Amazon has decided to stop offering the download & USB transfer option as per February 26th 2025, effectively pushing readers (again) to the Kindle devices and applications, and further assuming control over your purchased books and the way you can read them.

That. Sucks.

Now What?

Not all hope is lost however. When I was searching for a solution to this, I noticed DeDRM has a Beta version out which has a (limited) capability of removing DRM from .kfx files. (Actually, version 10.0.9 has been the RC for 10.1.0 since August 2023, but for some reason it hasn’t made it to 10.1.0 yet.)

What you can now try is to download the newly bought book via WiFi on your Kindle device. Then hook the device up with USB to your PC or Mac. Open the device’s drive, and navigate to /documents/Downloads/items01 and look for the .kfx file. Then drag and drop this file onto Calibre. The resulting imported book should show as a KFX format, indicating that the decryption was successful. You can now convert it to ePub and upload it to your favourite eBook reader. If the file shows up as KFX-ZIP, then decryption has failed, and you’re stuck with the book held hostage on the Kindle.

Instructions on installing the DeDRM (RC) version:

  • Find this latest version here: https://github.com/noDRM/DeDRM_tools/releases
  • After Downloading the DeDRM_tools_10.0.9.zip, expand it.
  • Then take the DeDRM_plugin.zip from there, and import it into Calibre as a plugin.
  • Also make sure to install the kfx import plugin from the official repository of Calibre.
  • If you didn’t have an earlier version of DeDRM installed, configure the plugin by entering your Kindle’s serial number. (Settings -> plugins. Select the DeDRM plugin and click ‘Customize plugin’. Then select ‘Kindle eInk ebooks’ and enter the serial.)

I’ve tried this on a couple of books I downloaded on the Kindle, and this worked for those at least. But there are various people reporting that for certain books the .kfx files are using an encryption scheme that DeDRM can not (yet) handle. Unfortunately, there is no way to know before buying if this will work for the book you want to purchase, so it may be time to start looking for alternative stores that will deliver your purchases without the DRM shackles.