If you tried to use Amazon’s website today, or if you tried to use some of Amazon’s services, you probably encountered some problems.
Amazon is experiencing a major outage today across all manner of services and platforms, and it highlights why it’s a good idea to keep all of your Kindle ebooks downloaded to your Kindle devices and Kindle apps.
Among other things, there are a number of reports online of people having problems buying Kindle ebooks from Amazon, and worse, some are unable to download purchased or borrowed ebooks during the outage.
The issue will likely get fixed soon, but it goes to show that you can never be 100% certain that you will have access to your library of books at all times. Outages happen, sometimes accounts get erroneously put on hold, and there are always outside factors at play.
We’ve all been made to believe that things will keep working how they are supposed to, and it’s easy to take that for granted, but you never know when you might lose access to your Amazon account for a limited amount of time or an extended amount of time.
That’s why it’s a good idea to keep all of your Kindle ebooks downloaded to your devices and/or apps when possible. If you have an older Kindle that’s even better because those books can still get backed up outside of Amazon’s DRM system.
I’ve never been a fan of having all my ebooks downloaded to a single Kindle device at one time because it’s hard to navigate a large library of books when you can only see 5 or 6 titles on the screen at one time, but it is good practice to have all your Kindle books downloaded somewhere in case you ever need access to them. It’s pretty easy to keep everything backed up and streamlined using Calibre on a computer.


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