Download & Transfer for Kindle eBooks Going Away on February 26

the-ebook-reader.com ^ | February 12, 2025 | Nathan

[ransomnote]

It’s time to start backing up your purchased Kindle ebooks if you haven’t already. It looks like Amazon intends to remove the Download & Transfer via USB option from their website for Kindle ebooks as of February 26th.

Over on reddit, some people are saying they’ve been greeted by a new prompt when trying to download Kindle ebooks from Amazon’s website that says the following:

Starting February 26, 2025, the “Download & Transfer via USB” option will no longer be available. You can still send Kindle books to your Wi-Fi enabled devices by selecting the “Deliver or Remove from Device” option.

So far all the reports seem to be for US accounts, but I’m still not seeing that message when I try to download ebooks from the Digital Content page at Amazon, but it didn’t stop me from downloading several dozen of my purchased ebooks to have on my computer just in case. 

At this point it’s still unclear if this is only going to apply to certain Kindle models, or if Amazon is getting rid of D&T across the board for all Kindles and all accounts. They already did away with D&T on the newer Kindles that were released in 2024, so I guess we should’ve seen this coming.

Even if D&T goes away entirely, you should still be able to get your purchased ebooks off of older Kindles for backup and DRM removal, provided the Kindle is old enough to have ebooks downloaded in the older AZW3 format instead of the newer KFX format (it’s harder to remove DRM from KFX).

[ransomnote]

That’s an excerpt. There’s more at the link!

[where's_the_Outrage?]

Have to look into this as I just upgraded my tablet. Probably also affects “Audible”.

[tumblindice]

Downloaded just last night all of Jack London’s stories from Call Of The Wild, White Fang to Building A Fire and other short stories 99¢. Didn’t know you could USB, from a computer?
No wifi? C’mon Dad, get with it.

[DesertRhino]

If you do not own a paper hardcopy, you do not own that book.

[ransomnote]

At the link, it explains you can download a copy for back up to your hard drive, until Feb 26.

[Jamestown1630]

We’ve bought lots of Kindle books from Amazon - it would take forever to download all of them. But the ones we really value, we buy hard copy; we never really trusted that this way of buying important books would last ‘forever’(because nothing digital reliably does, despite what we’re told.)

As far as I can tell, you can still read your E books on the Kindle devices, or on your library at Amazon.

[ansel12]

I have 25,601 Kindle books, how big a flash drive would that require?

[DouglasKC]

If I understand correctly that means we won’t be able to upload any other type of ebook to our kindles? Right now I have hundres of free e-books and from my computer I have a “Send to Kindle” app where I can select the file. It sounds like this is going away too?

[The FIGHTIN Illini]

BFL

[DouglasKC]

I read the article and it does say that “send to kindle” will still work. So that’s good news.

[ransomnote]

Good question. I don’t know the answer. Sorry. :(

[Flaming Conservative]

I’m computer illiterate. I have a kindle tablet with many, many kindle books on it. What am I supposed to do?

[Drago]

Nothing unless you want a “local copy” of the books(s) on your PC or Mac computer. Your Kindle usage is unaffected.

[Flaming Conservative]

Ok. Thanks!

[Drago]

More info.:

https://mybookcave.com/protect-kindle-library-amazons-new-policy/

https://techyorker.com/how-to-de-drm-kindle-books-using-calibre/

https://calibre-ebook.com/about

[jimtorr]

I have a Kindle App on my Mac that I do some reading with. Those ebooks I download there are all stored locally. I can read them when the inter webs are broken.

Presumably this change does not affect the app.

[tired&retired]

5 Terrabyte Hard Drives are really cheap. I’ve purchased several.

[tired&retired]

Thanks for letting me know.

I use this feature as it allows me to use cut & paste from the book while performing research.

[Myrddin]

Another broken contract between buyers of digital content and the supplier. O'Reilly shutdown their website where I had purchased THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS of O'Reilly products in PDF format. The original arrangement is your account on the site and electronic purchases would be available in perpetuity. I did my best to download all those books. I burned Blu-Ray disks of 22 GB of content. That was 10 years ago. I'm not sure where my backup disks are today. The hard lesson for digital media is the same as precious metals. If you can't hold it, you don't own it.

I'll note the Apress, Manning and Pearson have continued to maintain my accounts and books including updates. Same for Pragmatic Programmers.