Amazon’s ongoing battle against letting people download and backup purchased Kindle ebooks has taken another step in the wrong direction.
There are discussions on MobileRead about how newer Kindle ebooks published after April 22nd, 2025 cannot be downloaded using the Kindle for PC 2.4.0 method, thus making it harder to create backups and convert purchased ebooks to other formats to read on non-Kindle devices and apps (to be clear, you can still download ebooks to the latest version of Kindle for PC to read on a PC).
Earlier this year Amazon removed the ability to download purchased ebooks from their website for USB transfer, which closed off one of the ways to get Kindle ebooks for backup, and now they’ve closed off one of the few workarounds as well.
Apparently you can still get newer ebooks published after April 22nd off of E Ink Kindles for backup and DRM removal, and there’s also a complicated Android emulator workaround that still works, but using an older version of Kindle for PC is no longer an option for newer ebooks.
If recent history is any indication, once social media and the reddit crowd gets wind of this change it’ll turn into another mass misinformation event with all kinds of erroneous takes and downright lies, so don’t fall for it. In the grand scheme of things this is a minor change that will affect a small percentage of Kindle users, those that like to remove the DRM from their purchased ebooks.
If you have an E Ink Kindle you’ll still be able to do that, but if Amazon takes steps to lock down that option next, which they probably will at some point, then it will be a lot harder to get your purchased ebooks away from Amazon. They want to keep everything locked into their ecosystem so customers can’t leave for another platform without losing their purchased content.
Amazon wants control over your purchases—it’s as simple as that. The only sure way to avoid that is to buy ebooks from other companies, ones that still allow you to download your purchases for use outside of their devices and apps.
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