Amazon Kindle removes download feature of purchased books

In February 2025, the Amazon website website says that, starting February 26th, Amazon Kindle users can no longer download their purchased e-books from Amazon's website to their computers using the "download and transfer via USB" feature. A message describing this change appears on the page for the download feature.

Background

Amazon allows purchasing e-books on their platform. These e-books are designed to be used with Amazon Kindle devices and the Kindle app. The "download and transfer via USB" feature allows users to download purchased e-books on your computer. The intended use for this is to allow people to transfer e-books from their computer to their Kindle, without requiring the Kindle to have an internet connection.

As well as the intended usage, customers use this feature to create backups of their Kindle libraries and to convert the e-books to other formats to use with non-Kindle devices. Amazon Kindle e-readers use a proprietary format to store e-books, and a lot of the e-books contain DRM, which needs to be removed to use the e-books with non-Kindle devices. Newer Kindle devices use the KFX format, which makes it almost impossible to remove DRM. Since the download and transfer feature uses the older AZW3 format, people with newer Kindles can use this feature to download their e-books in a format where the DRM can be removed.

Removal of download and transfer via USB

In February 2025, Amazon added a notice next to the download button whenever you access the "download and transfer via USB" feature. This notice says that the feature will be removed on February 26th. This means that after that day, customers won't be able to download their purchased e-books from the Amazon website.

Customers will still be able to download e-books to their Kindles, but will have to either use the Kindle store on the device or use the "Deliver or Remove from Device" option on the Amazon website. Both of these options require the e-reader to have an internet connection.

This isn't the first time Amazon has made changes affecting customers' access to their purchased e-books. For instance, Amazon previously removed books customers had purchased since the company that uploaded them didn't have the rights to the content.

Customer response

This change has caused significant backlash from customers. This is due to the following reasons:

• The change makes it much harder for customers to read e-books they have purchased on non-Kindle devices
• Customers are now required to connect their Kindle e-readers to the internet if they want to download books purchased on Amazon
• The change makes it harder for customers to move away from Amazon to another e-book platform, since customers wouldn't be able to keep the e-books they purchased through Amazon

After the announcement, many consumers have downloaded their purchased e-books with the download and transfer feature while the feature is still available. Many people are also moving to other providers to buy e-books going forward.