PSA: Amazon kills “download & transfer via USB” option for Kindles this week – Ars Technica
“Download & transfer” was one last official way to get new books on old Kindles.
Later this week, Amazon is closing a small loophole that allowed purchasers of Kindle books to download those files to a computer and transfer them via USB. Originally intended to extend e-book access to owners of very old Kindles without Wi-Fi connectivity, the feature has also made it easier for people to download and store copies of the e-books they’ve bought, reducing the risk that Amazon might make changes to their text or remove them from the Kindle store entirely.The “Download & transfer via USB” option on Amazon’s site is going away this Wednesday, February 26. People who want to download their libraries to their PC easily should do so within the next two days. This change only affects the ability to download these files directly to a computer from Amazon’s website—if you’ve downloaded the books beforehand, you’ll still be able to load them on your Kindles via USB, and you’ll still be able to use third-party software as well as the Send to Kindle service to get EPUB files and other books loaded onto a Kindle.For typical Kindle owners who buy their books via Amazon’s store and seamlessly download them to modern or modern-ish Kindle devices over Wi-Fi, you likely won’t notice any change. The effects will be noticed most by those who use third-party software like Calibre to manage a local e-book library and people who have hopped to other e-reader platforms who want to be able to download their Kindle purchases and strip them of their DRM so they can be read elsewhere.The download-and-transfer option was useful for DRM haters partly because the files are delivered in the older AZW3 file format rather than the newer KFX format. AZW3 is the file format used by those older, pre-Wi-Fi Kindles, and its DRM is generally easier to remove.If you’re trying to download your Kindle purchases to your PC and Mac before the deadline, you’ll need to have a somewhat older Kindle or Fire device attached to your account. If you only have one of the 2024 Kindles associated with your Amazon account (the newest Paperwhite, the second-generation Scribe, or the Colorsoft), you won’t be offered the download option. Amazon’s site will also only allow you to download a single book at a time, which could take quite a while, depending on the size of your library.Jason Snell at Sixcolors highlighted a possible timesaver for people with large libraries: a command-line tool called the Amazon Kindle eBook Bulk Downloader that can grab all your files automatically rather than doing one at a time.This tool doesn’t circumvent any of Amazon’s DRM, and you still need to have a compatible Kindle or Fire device associated with your Amazon account; it merely automates the process of downloading every book in your library rather than forcing you to go one book at a time.Obviously, “people who want to download these files so they can strip their DRM” are not of concern to Amazon, but we contacted the company to ask if it has an official recommendation for people who are still using older Kindles and want to download Amazon-purchased books for legitimate reasons. An Amazon representative only responded with a statement telling us the other ways that customers could get Amazon books onto their Kindle devices.”Customers can continue reading books previously downloaded on their Kindle device, and access new content through the Kindle app, Kindle for web, as well as directly through Kindle devices with Wi-Fi capability,” the spokesperson told Ars.The first few generations of Kindle, including the original model in 2007 through the Kindle DX devices released in 2009 and 2010, relied exclusively on “Amazon Whispernet” cellular connectivity for downloading books and syncing progress between various devices. In the early 2020s, when most 3G cellular networks were shut down, Amazon retired the Whispernet branding and briefly offered old Kindle owners a discount on a new device. Amazon isn’t offering that kind of incentive to owners of ancient Kindles this time around, though the company will still give you “up to $5” in trade-in value for those old devices, according to this page.Ars Technica has been separating the signal from
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