With the news that Amazon will no longer be allowing users to download their Kindle books after February 26th, many are scrambling to download their books before it’s too late. The most up-to-date project for automating this process appears to be Amazon Kindle Bulk Downloader.
As the company that famously removed 1984 from thousands of devices without users permission, this is a move that shouldn’t be surprising, but is still disappointing, especially for those of us that were somewhat early adopters of ebooks with Kindles that don’t have a WiFi connection. (Yes, you can tell us about how you bought a Sony reader before the Kindle even came out in the comments.)
The Typescript-coded tool runs inside bun which can be installed in any of the big three OSes and even has a handy Docker image if that’s more your speed. Whether you use this tool or not, if you have any Kindle books we’d implore you to download them now.
Once you’ve downloaded those books, how about cracking the DRM either with LEGO or with software like Calibre. You could load it on a completely Open Source Reader then.
How on Earth are you supposed to read them if you can’t download them? Are Kindles going to start doing some sort of remote desktop type of protocol to access books? That’s the only way you could really read these things without an ability to download them, even then you still have the analog loophole.
You’re being too literal – the books will still be downloaded to the device in a way that is managed by amazon, but users will have no ability to do it independently
Read about this on Tomsguide.com. You will still have the ability to download books to your kindle or phone or iPad via WI-FI (or I assume using cellular data if needed). But, Amazon will be preventing you from downloading the book directly to your PC from your Amazon account. Most people probably don’t do this anyway. But it might not hurt to have backups. Every book I buy, I always download it directly to my Kindle over Wi-Fi anyway.
Buy? You mean license. You don’t buy an eBook.
They are preventing you from being able to download the files independent of a kindle app
In other words – no way to get the book file and crack the DRM to move to a different service
What you buy on kindle can only be run on a device running the kindle app – nothing else
So it would prevent me from downloading books onto my kindle using calibre ?
my kindle will never ever be leaving airplane mode if this is the case, this is the first ive heard of this
No. It prevents you from downloading books from Amazon and then transferring them to your Kindle. If the books you get are not from Amazon, you can still use calibre to transfer the books to your Kindle. However, if the books you are talking about where obtained THROUGH or FROM Amazon, then the only option is to allow them to wireless transfer it to your device.
Presumably you can then transfer it from your Kindle to your Calibre installation via USB, then remove DRM or change format.
Bad article, not specific enough!
Specifically – this prevents you from downloading (as in, as a file, to your computer) ebooks you’ve bought from/on Amazon. This does not (yet, anyways) prevent you from putting miscellaneous books on your kindle via something like Calibre.
I do recommend leaving your Kindle in Airplane mode regardless :)
I find kindle to be extremely frustrating. I had an account issue one time where I was hacked, and while waiting for it to be sorted out I lost all access to the books I’d downloaded and paid for already. If I’ve bought it, they should not have any rights to take them away or prevent us from having them.
This method still works, though at some point, Amazon will probably kill it as well: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=352278
Once again, the best solution is to avoid DRM altogether.
As it’s been seen before, I can foresee the irony of the only people keeping access to their contents being pirates.
A lot of books have “At the Publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.” So, it’s not hard to avoid. Worry more about exclusiveness and Kindle Unlimited.
https://www.twodoctorsmedia.com/home/a-book-builders-blog/2020/5/24/the-important-rules-of-kindle-unlimited
>corporate screwing over customers
Now that’s a first! /s
I have a nice library of mostly PDF books which I libgen’d over the years.
Land of Lisp.pdfdownloaded on 2010-12-19 could be read just fine my 2008 laptop, then on my Nexus 7 (2012) and still works on my Samsung tablet from 2020.I suppose
Design of machinery, 6th edition, Robert L. Norton.pdfdownloaded just a few days ago will still work in 2040, no matter what device is currently available on the market. As long as there’s a software to display PDFs, no high-on-cocaine corporate manger can decide what books can I own and read.One useful trick I learned during Nexus 7 days was to trim margins (aka useless white space) of a PDF so that text always fits entire screen without having to zoom or use “reflow” feature. Since then I keep a “non-trimmed” version on my PC and “trimmed” version on mobile devices.
Same here, I bought a kindle, never connected to Amazon, and just put pdf’s on it.
Hmm, I think was the obvious end point for amazon – they have been trying (and still are) to kill off physical books eg I find quite a few titles now only available as kindle, high price of physical books, etc etc.
That has obviously worked, as having killed of the competition the kindle ‘book’ prices have been rising substantially. It’s clear that the next step is that you have to ‘rent’ the ‘book’ rather than ‘own’ it – which is why they are getting rid of local copies…
Amazon, which started as a book store, has done more to kill books than anyone else..
Project Gutenberg and Internet Archive are your best friend for accessible literature .
Well, they need to save all the paper/cardboard for their shipping boxes. /s
I wonder how long their current DRM will last once they remove the reason nobody bothered to crack it.
Seems like madness to me. Why would I bother paying for a Kindle book now?
The whole point is having a library I can carry around with me.
And more importantly one that I can use without access to internet.
This is a shoot yourself in the foot moment for Amazon.
I mostly read on a phone.
Just a rubbish article/summary. You can still download your purchased books to the kindle the way that I imagine the majority of people do (wifi direct from amazon). All they are stopping is allowing you to download bought amazon books to your pc for transfer to the kindle via usb (they aren’t stopping the side loading, just the downloading of amazon bought books for side loading).
YeahI don’t get it either but it does have some people outraged. I have a first or second generation Kindle reader still going strong after like.. geez 15 years? All I’ve ever done is bought the book, it appears on my reader. I used to be able to do it using the free built in 3G but after 3G was phased out, I figured out I could just use WiFi. For my use case (and I want to be clear here, just my personal experience I’m not telling others what to do) I don’t see the benefit of having the e-book on a laptop first somehow, then fiddling with a USB cable to download it to my device when it all happens seamlessly over WiFi to begin with. People can hate on Amazon, that is fine, but for me who reads a LOT, it has been incredible.
What about when the day comes where Amazon decides its not worth it to keep maintaining their eBook system and you can’t redownload a book?
What about if they decide to take away a book you own and wish to read?
What about if they silently edit a book under your feet?
They’ve already done all but the first before. People are mad because Amazon is removing the last protection people had against those acts.
It’ll bother you when you finally feel the affects.
What about if they decide to take away a book you own and wish to read?
That’s the point, you DO NOT OWN the book, you license it (or RENT it) from Amazon!
So they are only preventing people from having backups or managing their media in the way they want.
So much better.
They can 100% pull the rug out from under you anytime they feel like it and there’s NOTHING you can do about it! Have you learned anything from being repeatedly ABANDONED by Google?
I got a Sony reader before the Kindle even came out :) My wife’s uncle brought it to us as a wedding present from the US and I had to explain to him what an e-ink reader actually is (he still considered it just a not very practical novelty).
Unfortunately, it was the PRS-500, so I suffered all the early adoption woes… And it did not last very long.
Try original Nook.
I bought a nook a few years ago with the intention of using it as a home automation dashboard. I re-flashed it with some Linux/android distribution but it was too slow to run a browser for that purpose.
I now use is as a reader for when I travel, and works quite well at that.
I’m still confused
I don’t use a kindle, I read on my phone. But for years, I bought them through the kindle app. I still use the kindle app to read books I bought from Amazon, Will I still be able to read and re-read my books?
You’ll be able to recover your ebooks as long as you remain within the Kindle ecosystem (more recent, wifi-able devices, or apps), this was a way to download them for wifi-less Kindle devices that also happened to provide an easily manipulated file for those who wanted to back it up or convert to other formats.
As long as agreements don’t change nor Amazon decide to mess with your library. However they could take your library away at any time and they are removing the method people would use for backups.
this the reason why digital anything is a bad idea. take heed from this all you xbox and ps. once the servers go down so do you. i am not purchasing anything digital ever. i have a nice collection of physical games, dvd and media on the servers. without any worries and backed up to many places.
Unless you are just a hoarder, there is nothing wrong with buying anything digital. Your physical media or private servers will die decades before xbox, sony or steam servers that keep my digital copies. Also the xbox/sony closing their stores is just that – closing stores, you can still download your digital games without any problems, its probably WAY safer there than on your servers.
Plus, buying games digital means good, fast money to developers. Some people hoard games for some reason, but they are to be experienced, and digital distribution lets you not only experience the game, have it safe and secure on one of the best, most stable servers, but also help developers financially, without a huge hassle of publishing it on some silly physical medium.
So after 2/26/25, will my already purchased Kindle ebooks not be available through the Kindle app on my iPhone?
I’ve been using regular Android tablets as readers for 20 years. I use Coolreader and Alreader apps, together they’ll read anything but PDFs.
Coolreader also lets you change font, color etc.
I read books. I don’t collect them. It’s been at least 25 years since I’ve read a novel more than once.
I guess I’m a rare dissenting opinion. I’ve had a kindle since the very beginning. Same device actually. Happy to pay Amazon or who ever the $10 for a book to read. At this point I have enough Amazon credit to basically never pay for an ebook again.
Taking a medium (not very deep) dive into it, I pay for a book on kindle, it still goes to my device over WiFi. Mine had free forever 3G but obv that’s over now.
Basically this seems to affect those that want to have free books or something and not pay for them. It’s a different argument for paying the artist not the publisher.
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If there is a book I want forever I’ll buy dead tree version. But for bestsellers or anything else that otherwise would have taken up space in my house, after I read it meh. Good riddance.
That is most assuredly NOT true. First of all, the “Download and Transfer” option has, for some time, ONLY been available for books that you PURCHASE. So that right there blows your argument out of the water.
Secondly, there are multiple reasons why people would not want their devices online. One being Amazon’s already proven track record of deleting and/or modifying books that YOU PAID FOR.
So stop paying Amazon. I know for a fact that a majority of books are available from other sources.
well… no.
That’s not exactly true. The books I read are mostly independent authors who ONLY self-publish an Amazon. But no one ever said that Amazon was my only source. I was just explaining why the one to whom I was replying was wrong. 🤷♂️
It totally is true tho, thats how I got most of my super expensive kindle books for univ. Bought a book, downloaded it fast through the calibre on my pc, returned it on amazon, they deleted it from my device and library, redownload it on kindle from calibre.
I guess I’m missing something. I “buy” an e-book from amazon, turn on my kindle’s wifi, and then the book is on my device. Then I turn off my wifi and get to reading. I’m guessing a lot of other people do the same thing. I’m not arguing that… well I’m not arguing at all actually… I’m just saying for my user experience, this doesn’t seem to affect me at all. I hope I’m not wrong. I’m also not saying it is great or that it might screw over others, it almost certainly will.
..
I tried to look at what will actually change, and ended up on Reddit. With my half-assed research into it, it seems they are changing (getting rid of?) some feature that I never use anyway. Again I’m not sure how or why you extrapolate my experience to everyone, once I figured out it won’t mess anything up for me, I stopped caring. Bad attitude probably, but there you go. And again, finally, I do hope I’m not wrong but like I said initially, if its a book I really want to keep around (something I almost never do anymore) I’ll just buy deadtree version and be done with it. I’ve moved too many times to be lugging around books.
The piece of the puzzle that you are missing is that not every Kindle ever made has wifi. Without wifi you have to download the book on your computer & then sync over usb to install the book. Think apple ipod before the touch. Those Kindle’s will no longer be able to use books you have purchased legally from Amazon.
Thank you for this rational explanation.
The bad attitude part is probably the core here. This doesn’t affect you YET or at least in a way you notice so it doesn’t matter to you.
As soon as they delete something from your library that you wanted to read or edit a book that you care about and want to re-read and you don’t have a backup or means to have made one then it might bother you.
That’s where you’re wrong if you read my original comment. I would no more buy an irreplaceable book from Amazon kindle than “buy” some irreplaceable music on anything other than physical media. I know the scam. I am well aware. I buy pulp fiction, bestsellers and other nonsense that I enjoy on kindle. Worst case is that I’d probably only “lose” half a book if they nuke my entire library and I probably got that book free anyway due to credits etc. If I need something forever I will pay, often handsomely, for the real version woodware.
The people getting mad about it should not have bought in in the first place without understanding what they were getting into. My eyes are wide open.
Then I guess the real reason you have a bad attitude about it is that you’ve got money to burn and just don’t care when someone steals it nor when someone steals from someone else.
There is not having the energy to put into caring since people are being screwed the world over all the time, and then there is actively putting energy into not caring like the comments all across this thread.
Thanks a lot for the heads up on this. I downloaded all my Kindle books now. Took some time to get the tool working but worked like a charm.
It’s like they are doing the work of a pro-piracy firm.
solution: https://1lib.sk/
http://libgen.gs/
“As the company that famously removed 1984 from thousands of devices without users permission, this is a move that shouldn’t be surprising, but is still disappointing,”
Amazon removed book from user device without user permission and you decided to keep paying them for such service? Than I am guessing you had your lesson now, and simply stop paying them – you don’t want any “unsurprising, but is still disappointing moves” in near future do you?
I’ve physically left at airports, misplaced, loaned out and never got back or otherwise lost soooo many books (okay maybe 5 ever) … that the thought of having one book, and one that is readily available everywhere for peanuts or free “removed” from my digital library is not going to stop me from continuing to pay them for a massively convenient and affordable service. Apparently this makes me a bad person, or an idiot, or something else. I’m ok with that though.
…
OK I looked into this as well. Apparently Amazon had been selling illegal copies, and pulled them. Then later apologized for the way they did it and offered either a digital copy or $30, whichever the customer wanted. Since the original book sold for a whopping $0.99, that is actually pretty great customer service. A company realizing it was selling illegal stuff and instead of just continuing on being illegal and not respecting the works owners’ rights (they well could have done this, they are huge and have lawyer money), tired to fix it, bungled it a bit and pissed people off, then went over the top to correct the mistake and apologize? I mean. What more do people want?
You sure do love Amazon. We’re you hired by them for comment sections like these?
Haha. Nope. I mean believe what you want that’s cool. Me and millions of others use Amazon every day, happily, without getting paid. In fact last I checked I pay them for the privilege. Lots of people may use and even pay for things you disagree with. Look around. Lots of Tesla cars on the road ya know?
If you’ve been around here for any stretch of time you’d see I’ve been pretty active here for years.
I have no issues with people buying from Amazon or buying a Tesla.
My issues come from the constant minimization of a major issue and another brick being used by companies to abuse their customers after they’ve gotten their door wedged open.
If you are a regular here, then maybe you are one of the commenters dropping bad takes on the regular.
airplane mode + epub + zlib, all free books, every book.
Huh? Is this a download formula? Can I still get books through bookbub?
Sold my Kindle Oasis and bought a ONYX BOOX Go Color 7. Problem solved, couldn’t be happier.
Does this affect using the Android app and/or the Kindle website in any way?
To those talking about pdfs… I hear you. But I happen to have a lot of pdf books and I hate reading them. They are basically a gallery of images of pages all poorly formatted for any device I want to read them on. Actual intentional e-book formats underneath some layer of drm have actual text that flows properly into the space the device allows.
I have actually bought Kindle copies of books I already had as pdfs because it was just too frustrating, either having to scroll left/right for every line or zooming out until I needed the strongest glasses I could find to still only barely be able to read it.
20 years ago when my eyes were young… maybe… But if you are young don’t think you will be looking at your pdf collection in the same way 20 years from now. It goes fast! And isn’t owning it forever what the discussion is all about?
Plain, vanilla .TXT books are ok. But aside from the 100+ y/o titles on Project Guttenburg I don’t think there are a lot of those out there. As great as Jules Verne is there is so much more out there!
Have you ever seen the Kindle they made for a little while that had an e ink screen that was 8.5X11. I got lucky and found one at a thrift store years ago. It is absolutely the solution to reading pdfs. All i really use it for is service manuals & it is perfect for that. It was around $500-600 when you could buy a wifi Kindle for less than $100. So there is probably not many out in the wild but well worth it if you could find one @ $50 or less.
PDFs and TXTs aren’t the only DRM-free options. You can get proper EPUBs without DRM
Already disabled on 2/19
Never had anything to do with kindle after amazons first go at “we don’t want you to have {whatever} so it is gone,” paid for or not.
Too many other otions…
The “cloud” giveth and the “cloud” taketh away. Cursed be the cloud! :))
Ugh. A lot of small time authors only publish on kindle. I buy their books and then crack them with calibri and deDRM. It sucks, but I will never pay for a book that I won’t own and which can be altered or deleted at any time.
Guessing this is a precursor to future Kindle devices no longer having a USB data connection. It will be there for power only. The only way to get books on the device will be with the WiFi connection to the Kindle store.
This wants you to give it your login, password, and a 2fa code?? That’s wildly unsafe. You can do this all locally with just the browser’s console.