At this time last year, people were in an uproar over Amazon removing the option to download and transfer Kindle ebooks from their website. A lot of people swore they’d never buy another ebook from Amazon again, but I wonder how many people stuck through with that promise? Was it enough for Amazon to notice a dip in sales?
The download and transfer option officially went away on February 26th, 2025 so it’s been exactly one year since Amazon removed the option. Since then, they’ve locked down Kindle ebooks even more and have made it harder to get ebooks away from their closed-off ecosystem for those that want to be able to make backups and read purchased ebooks on non-Kindle devices and apps.
However, last month Amazon did start allowing downloads again, but only on DRM-free ebooks that authors and publishers have enabled a download option, and they’re requiring them to go back and enable the option on a book-by-book basis for previously published titles, and some publishers just don’t have the time or funds to make that happen.
I wonder if Amazon bringing back downloads on a limited basis was done because they noticed a drop in overall ebook sales, or if it’s because they wanted to avoid a potential lawsuit over adding DRM to ebooks that authors/publishers specifically requested to be DRM-free?
It also seems like Amazon is running more double point days for Kindle points to try and boost ebook sales, but maybe that’s just a coincidence.
Personally, I haven’t purchased a Kindle ebook since last February before the download and transfer option went away. I had no intention of boycotting Amazon over it, but if they’re going to make it a major hassle to backup ebooks I’ll just buy them from somewhere else that makes the process easy. Except I haven’t been buying any ebooks.
I use the public library and read books I already own, and frankly, I just haven’t been into reading very much lately. I’m the kind of person that doesn’t care about “owning” books. Borrowing ebooks from the library is fine with me. If I really love a book then I might buy it to read again later if it’s on sale for a reasonable price, but if it’s a book that I just read I won’t want to read it again for several years anyway. The whole concept of owning books that are already in my brain seems odd to me, but I’m not normal. I might actually prefer an ebook rental system, but nobody is interested in doing that, it seems.
So how long has it been since you last bought an ebook from Amazon?
The last one I bought was on 6 October 2020, long before the USB download and transfer option (which I have never used) was removed. I bought it because it is only available in e-book format on Amazon. I have no problem shopping on Amazon, but I have been buying from a Spanish bookshop for years (which now has an agreement with PocketBook, by the way) and I am used to shopping there. I am not particularly interested in Amazon, Kobo or Google, but I am unfamiliar with the DRM controversy. I find the Kindle reading software good enough that I don’t need to remove the DRM from the few books I’ve bought on Amazon. I haven’t had any problems with books disappearing either. All the ones I’ve bought are still there, so I’m not particularly interested in saving them elsewhere. But I think it’s fine for people to make backups of their books and edit them. That’s not my case.
Not since…. 2010? Whenever I got my PW1.
I didn’t like where they were going even fifteen years ago, and as soon as the Kobo store became more than a shell of a marketplace I switched fully over to that and independent book selling sites.
I still miss Mobipocket and the old Baen store.