Amazon Will Allow Epub and PDF Downloads for Drm-Free Ebooks
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The eBook world just got a little more flexible as Amazon announced it will allow ePub and PDF downloads for DRM-free eBooks, but with a twist: it's opt-in for authors and publishers. Commenters were initially confused, thinking this was a default feature for all Kindle users or DRM-free titles, but it turns out that authors and publishers must explicitly permit these downloads. Some users welcomed the change, seeing it as a reasonable decision that puts control in the hands of publishers, while others suggested making the opt-in process more user-friendly. As one self-published author noted, this is now the default setting for new DRM-free books, making it a positive development for those who want to offer their readers more format options.
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This isn't announcing that pdf's and epub's are now available for everything that was drm-free, this is announcing that they will _permit_ pdf's and epub's to be available.
We can understand why they do it this way (they only need the option to exist, and can afford to apply dark patterns to it), but we don't need to excuse Amazon. Especially when they don't give a shit about what we think in the first place.
I'm also not going to write off everything they do as evil only because of who they are though. Defaulting to disabled vs enabled would be reasonable too, though I don't know enough publishers or independent authors to know which option would be more often selected to pick a default.
It makes sense not to do this retroactively.
actually, many kindle books I have from years ago mention they have no drm at the request of the publisher.
...yet were distributed in DRM .azw format
1. Sell digital things, that costs as same as physical copy
2. Make it so that customer doesn't even own them
3. Profit (No question marks in between)
What a mess. I've mostly stopped Kindle/ebooks but I still have audible which seems like suffering from the same problem.
The fact you see DRM as the norm and non-DRM as “a unicorn” that “doesn’t exist”, is mildly sad. You should explore all of the above a lot more, and much more besides.
I think it’s sad that what we thought everyone saw as a nonsense is now so normalised that alternatives are just disappearing from view. Everyone should be encouraged to explore.
Piracy is your preferred option, but when that became more mainstream we actually ended up creating the market for more DRM, in the form of iTunes, Spotify and others. I’m not sure I want the future of digital media to be entirely subscription-based like that.
What might be a better solution is showing that media creators can achieve more of their own objectives through releasing media without DRM. This only works if their objectives are not entirely around making money from media sales, and more aligned to influence, or audience building.
I’m actually surprised at this point that musicians - given they don’t make money from streaming services and see them as tools to build audiences for live tours where they really make their money - don’t just jump over already.
Nah DRM and subscription models would have arrived even if there were no piracy. Subscription models because they guarantee income and most people use less than it's worth. And DRM because companies are paranoid.
In fact even now DRM serves no actual purpose other than harassing legitimate buyers. Pirates have no issue getting content and in the case of books they never will because copying can even be done by OCR.
Look I’m not saying “pirate everything and never pay the artists” - I’m saying “never pay the predatory tech companies that have inserted themselves between us and artists”
...and then they get re-packaged with DRM on Amazon's store, mostly because people uploading public domain books on Amazon have no idea what they're doing.
> Project Gutenberg and others produce DRM-free versions. Many academics and people who wish to share their knowledge also publish works DRM-free, sometimes under permissive (copyleft), licenses.
You can read DRM-free stuff on a Kindle already, so that's not particularly relevant here.
> The fact you see DRM as the norm and non-DRM as “a unicorn” that “doesn’t exist”, is mildly sad.
When every big publisher is doing it, it is the norm. That doesn't mean there doesn't exist any book publisher which doesn't do this, but the vast, vast majority of the books actually sold today contain DRM. We don't have to like that norm, but pretending it isn't one is just denying reality.
While lots public domain books are on Amazon's store, most of those books are not free, both in the sense of "free or charge" and "DRM free". A lot of literature classic are released by a major publishing house with foreword and annotations, which to be fair, are copyrighted works and provide value. And they cost a bit of money. The "real" public domain versions provide by Amazon are barebone. Those versions are often good enough for many people, but you don't need to get them from Amazon in the first place.
In other words, public domain or not does not have much to do with DRM-free or even Amazon.
"being made available DRM-free on Amazon" (and I'd narrow that down to "primarily/only on Amazon")
Of course public domain books are DRM free but I'm getting those from Gutenberg, not Amazon. Likewise, the copyleft books I'll most likely download from their own homepages, not Amazon.
I'm aware that DRM free media exists, including for currently copyrighted content that Amazon distributes ;)
It looks like distribution in the UK, Australia and New Zealand (only?) is from the imprint Gollancz, who has decided to go with DRM versions.
I saw the writing on the wall and downloaded my books from Amazon a few months before their announcement. Out of around 1000 books I had 300ish that were DRM free.
The publisher/author will have to go through a process to have their books be downloadable again.
Now they could actually be distributed as unencrypted .epub
In practice, the biggest store that doesn't have a DRM-free option is Audible... which has a near-monopoly on audiobooks. So Cory Doctorow has to do crowdfunding campaigns for all his audiobooks. Of course, that doesn't stop his books from getting illegally reposted to Audible anyway, and Amazon doesn't care about enforcing rights they can't have. Which led to him actually publishing this gem on Audible: https://www.amazon.com/Why-None-Books-Available-Audible/dp/B...
"Download options: EPUB 3 (Adobe DRM)": https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/enshittification-4
Kobo does sell some other books DRM-free, so perhaps this is some sort of error. You can buy it directly from the publisher without Adobe DRM, there it has a watermark instead.
So maybe it's screwup on the UK site.
Of course if they really believed in the concept they would publish their own works DRM-free, but that would conflict with the business model of the publishing arm.
Switched to a Boox, installed koreader, set up sync thing. It's insane how much better a reading experience this is
You'll see something like the following on the bottom of book details:
> At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D3CB76TV
While I understand people pirating movies - there are hundreds of movies I'd happily pay to watch, but which are literally unavailable to me because of some arbitrary 'regional' restriction imposed by the distributors. But I can't think of a single book that isn't available in most parts of the world - certainly they're available wherever a Kobo is for sale.
So how are new books going to be published in the future, if people like you don't pay writers for their work? Would you like your work to be pirated, so you wouldn't be able to even buy another Kobo?
Imagine being so good at writing, that people out there are trying to get a copy of it that they can upload to The Pirate Bay. Hell yeh, I'd love that... seems like reaching the big leagues.
It's not immoral in any way to make a living off of your own creations, but - artists gonna art.
But I don't read books I haven't legally acquired, whether through a paid bookstore, or temporarily borrowed via Libby, or Standard Ebooks or whatever. I won't yell at other people for doing that, but I don't do it myself. In a nutshell, I follow the same rules as with physical books I own (or temporarily possess).
I picked a random book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/hemlock-silver-t-kingfisher/022...
It's DRM Free, and available as an ePub. Other than Kindle, what device does not accept ePub?
https://support.libro.fm/support/solutions/articles/48000695...
For this feature alone, I'd never go back to Kindle. Sure, I might be able to replicate it with jailbreaking + KOReader. But the Kobo worked this way out of the box.
Because Amazon were increasingly locking-down their systems - and also because they are all-round shits - I decided to abandon the ecosystem having been a customer since the days they only sold books.
I have owned two Paperwhites, two Oasis devices, and a Kindle Scribe. I sold all of them last year and bought a Kobo Libra Colour.
I get WAY more joy from reading on the Kobo. I love buying books from the Kobo store (yes I know they also have DRM) - and I'm buying and reading WAY more on the Kobo than I was at the end of my time with Amazon.
Every time I buy yet another book on the Kobo Store I feel the thrill of sticking it to the horrible, anti-user shits at Amazon.
Example: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/gardens-of-the-moon
They've been doing this for YEARS before Amamzon.
Asking people to verify that they are honest will never help you. Dishonest people will of course lie to you and say they are honest. While honest people will be insulted by your question and not want to engage with you.
What you can do is verify. Try a Kobo, try a Kindle. Make up your own mind.
It would be great too to bring that information back to HN and share it with us.
Kobo feels like something I actually own. More so than Kindle or even my iDevices. That's a little unusual these days from a mainstream product and that will make its users enthusiastic.
I have a Kobo Clara BW. It's still a great machine, but the Kindle is definitely superior for feel and visuals, but I use the Kobo 95% of the time. They are way more open with the software and I have mine in "sideload" mode (an official setting), which really just means that it doesn't make me log into anything and it doesn't even attempt to connect to the internet. Also, I can purchase a DRM free ebook on the train, plug a USB cable into my phone and my Kobo, and then load it on like that. Now I own my digital book, have supported the author with a larger margin, and get to read it on my more private machine.
Definitely not a no-brainer for everyone, but I'm happy with my Kobo.
What I found disappointing was when I had to swap out the screen on the Kobo and found that it was glued and that the battery was soldered. I managed to do fix it, but I don't like things that are unnecessarily hard to fix.
It's fine if it fits your need, but will be far from a good alternative in most regions.
Unfortunately, it seems like this will be chosen by the publisher, so of course probably most of the books won't be downloadable at all, and Amazon can now point their finger at the publisher instead of taking the blame themselves. Publishers was probably always the reason behind the move, but at least now Amazon have someone else to blame, which I guess is great for them.
But after they decided the ebooks were actually just license to read, I did exactly the same as you, and now rather than happily buying from them, actively discourage everyone in my social circle from using kindle.
I am not going back, whoever they decide to blame.
Im kinda cheeky and use Amazons Send-to-Kindle service to send ebooks in epub format to my kindle via wifi
I’m amazed to see so many comments focused on everything but libraries.
Also, I reduced the buying pace - owning physical books takes up space, so the bar for getting something into the library is now much higher than before.
Or you can save yourself bother of removing DRM by buying the book from wherever and then downloading a copy from Anna's.
They decided that when they launched the Kindle. It's always been that way.
Any interpretation of that transaction as anything but a purchase of a copy is delusional. I couldn't care less what their ToS said about it, any more than I'd care what a sign on the wall of a bookstore said.
Yes, it has. They made it clear right when they launched the store.
> I couldn't care less what their ToS said about it
You're welcome to not care about whatever you feel, but the TOS is what matters.
This became big news a long time ago:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/jul/17/amazon-ki...
No one except those who explicitly went looking for this knew it. It wasn't made clear in any way.
> This became big news a long time ago:
Speaking of orthogonal. I remember this well. It was a case where Amazon stole back books people had purchased. The core concern at the time wasn't that Amazon had revoked a license to read a book, but that they had deleted purchased books from users' collections.
But at the end of the day, for many years Amazon had an action button saying "Buy now with 1-Click" with no legal fiction disclaimer. The button was identical to what you'd see when buying a bag of cat food, DVD, or anything else you'd flat-out purchase from them.
What is silly is actually knowing the whole 1984 episode, and still believing you owned the books.
> Amazon refunded the cost of the books, but told affected customers they could no longer read the books and that the titles were "no longer available for purchase".
This has nothing to do with people's having bought a license to the books. It's about Amazon's never having had authorization from the publisher to sell the books. There is no reference at all to people's having licensed the books from Amazon. Amazon referred to people as having bought the books.
You seem to be missing the importance of that nuance.
OK:
https://goodereader.com/blog/kindle/amazon-changes-licensing...
"Amazon has revised the text when purchasing a Kindle e-book on its online store. You do not own the book you bought but are licensing it. It used to say “By clicking on above button, you agree to Amazon’s Kindle Store Terms of Use.”"
...
"This is not a policy shift from Amazon for the US; they are more upfront about it now. Amazon has always licensed the digital content to users, so anything purchased does not mean the user owns it, they just bought a license"
Much more useful would have been if you had linked to an archive of the original Kindle Store Terms of Use, which state:
> Use of Digital Content. Upon your payment of the applicable fees set by Amazon, Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Digital Content will be deemed licensed to you by Amazon under this Agreement unless otherwise expressly provided by Amazon.[0] (emphasis mine)
Notice that "or as authorized by Amazon" is part of the clause with "solely on the device," not a separate clause that somehow might be interpreted to apply to the "right to keep a permanent copy" part.
Does it also say that it is considered licensed to you? Sure. But the "license" is the "right to keep a permanent copy."
It's one thing for Amazon to say, "Shit, we sold you a book we weren't authorized to sell. We have to undo the whole transaction." It's quite another to do what the GGGGGGGP comment (I didn't count the G's) is complaining about and delete your permanent copy of a book for which they did validly sell you a license to keep a permanent copy.
Amazon has meaningfully changed the license agreement now. In 2025, it says:
> Use of Kindle Content. Kindle Content is licensed, not sold, to you by the Content Provider. Upon your download or access of Kindle Content and payment of any applicable fees (including applicable taxes), the Content Provider grants you subject to the terms of this Agreement, including without limitation those in “Changes to Service; Amendments” below, a non-exclusive right to view, use, and display such Kindle Content (for Subscription Content, only as long as you remain an active member of the underlying membership or subscription program), solely through Kindle Software or as otherwise permitted as part of the Service, solely on the number of Supported Devices specified in the Kindle Store, and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Content Provider may include additional terms for use within its Kindle Content. Those terms will also apply, but this Agreement will govern in the event of a conflict. Some Kindle Content, such as interactive or highly formatted content, may not be available to you on all Kindle Software.[1]
They've eliminated the right to keep a permanent copy that was originally part of the license sold. That change matters. Deleting content sold under that license is a violation of the terms of the agreement on their part.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20110109000847/http://www.amazon... [1]https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...
Then I use epubor ultimate to convert to epub and read it on my generic e-ink reader. Some folks object to the licensing or whatever with epubor (unattributed GPL?) but it works, it's easy, and when Amazon tightens up the DRM they always find a way around it eventually.
I wonder how many books are actually DRM-free and are going to be affected by this change. I suspect relatively few, but I would be happy to be wrong
I've also purchased some books that are available as serials on the web for free.
I would imagine those publishers would be aligned with making them .epub
Even if I wanted to join, Kindle Unlimited is not offered here. I can't even buy the eBook from Amazon.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OZ4NMHU
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Anyone-Builds-Everyone-Dies-Superhuma...
[1]: https://www.kobo.com/ww/en/ebook/if-anyone-builds-it-everyon...
But I wonder if the reason for that little hoop was because of Kindle Unlimited.
Since I couldn't refund, I had to pirate the book as epub/pdf from elsewhere. I decided to never again buy anything from Kobo.
No where legit is DRM free for eBooks from the big publishers. You don't even have to use the Kobo app since they let you download the ACSM file and use it Adobe Digital Editions which could be used on a computer or ADE supported eReader like Pocketbook (or Kobo!). This has been the case since before they were even called Kobo! And if the publisher offers the book DRM free they just give you a DRM-free ePub instead of the ACSM file.
These days, with the Calibre DeACSM and DeDRM plug-ins you don't even need ADE. It's also trivially easy to remove the DRM from the Kobo desktop app or their readers. It's way easier than Amazon and a way better experience with multiple routes to a DRM free file.
Their website didn't guide me towards a callable phone number or give me an actual e-mail address I could write to. Instead I went back and forth between chatbot and docs and webpages, without success. It is obvious to me, that they want as little actual human in the loop as possible. Real shitty experience, while my money is already gone and I am trying to get it back. Easier to give up and just download an acceptable version elsewhere. Not going through all that hassle to use their platform, which doesn't value me as a customer anyway.
ACSM is Adobe's crap and the same thing you'd have use for Google Play Books and a few others. It's again another slight step change where you have to open the ACSM with ADE to get the book in the first place. WTF Adobe did it that way, IDK but they did.
I buy like 60% of my ebooks from Kobo and have never owned a Kobo-brand ereader.
Kobo is not it. Not gonna support them.
What is bizarre here is you posting these comments, trying to invalidate my all around terrible experience with Kobo. Your account is green behind the ears and all your comments are on Kobo, Kobo, Kobo. Go figure.
Personally I just buy my books DRM free now. If that's not possible, then I get them from my friend Anna who has a nice library.
And yes I have liberated all my DRM books from Amazon. But Adobe Digital I will never touch again (Nor buy books with DRM on it in the first place).
1. Install ADE on Windows (or a Windows VM (recommended))
2. Log in with Adobe account
3. Download ASCM files from Kobo or Google Play Books and open with ADE
4. the optional step I've been trying to hint at for like 3 posts now
5. Put it on your reader, your Calibre library, etc.
And as for removing the DRM, yeah but that can be done with kindle's and kobo's too.
Apparently, during a recent review, they decided this counted as fraud and banned my account. As a result, I can no longer log in and lost access to all my Kindle e-books. They also remotely wiped my Kindle, so my entire library is gone. I appealed the decision, but I’ve been waiting for over six months with no resolution.
> "Amazon.co.uk found that the rate at which refunds were occurring on your account was extraordinary and could not continue."
After looking through my order history, the only refund I could find on this account was the one related to the book I mentioned above. If there was any other activity or misuse, Amazon hasn’t disclosed it to me, which makes it impossible to verify or dispute their conclusion.
Fast forward a few months, I never received a refund and they claim they have no record any more. I could chargeback my credit card but I imagine I'd also be permanently banned from Amazon - so instead I accept they've just stolen $1000 from me with no recourse...
(if anyone from Amazon is reading this, my email is in my bio!)
I do backups but better be safe than sorry.
So the real question is - how is amazon going to enshitify drm-free books? Are they trying to wipe out gutenburg, standard-ebooks, etc?
Are they trying to be the youtube of drm-free? The place where everyone goes, and that becomes crap due updating Ts&Cs - inserting ads or charges?
I still buy physical media from them once a year (November) when availabilty and rest of the world can't compete price-wise. Yes I recognise the hypocrisy of said actions and minimise it as much as possible.
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