Huge update to Amazon Kindle could change the way | Tech News

The Amazon Kindle is the bestselling and best-known e-reader vary in the world, with hundreds of thousands of units and even more e-book titles bought annually. The novelty of carrying round a whole lot of books on one small gadget remains to be alluring virtually twenty years on from the release of the first Kindle in 2007.

But regardless of – or maybe as a result of of – the Kindle’s dominance, Amazon has opted to restrict sure features of the e-book expertise, even after you’ve paid for a title. Thanks to a technology known as Digital Rights Management (DRM), Amazon can lock Kindle books so you possibly can solely learn them on Kindle units or in the Kindle app, which means you possibly can’t learn them on a Kobo or different e-reader, regardless that you’ve paid for the e-book.

More not too long ago, Amazon additionally determined to stop permitting its prospects to obtain their already bought e-books from their Amazon accounts. This used to be potential so that you could store the EPUB information in your pc or exhausting drive, however this characteristic was taken away in February 2025.

In a not-quite-turnaround of occasions, Amazon has launched a new way to obtain your Kindle books, however whether or not or not it is possible for you to to is down to publishers and authors.

As reported by Goodereader, as of January 20, 2026, Amazon now offers publishers and authors the option to make their e-books DRM-free, which might imply patrons of Kindle e-books would have the option to use them nonetheless they wished, together with studying them on different e-reader units or to store bodily information of purchased content material like they could earlier than.

If a writer or creator submits an e-book to the Kindle platform and chooses not to apply DRM, patrons will then have the option to obtain them from the Manage Your Content And Devices part of your Amazon account through the Amazon web site in a browser (Amazon doesn’t make it simple!).

From right here you possibly can click on by to Books, the place it is possible for you to to obtain your EPUB information if they’re DRM-free. However, publishers and authors may have to retroactively make current Kindle titles DRM-free, so you’ll in all probability discover none of your present purchases can be found to obtain.

You would possibly discover new titles could crop up DRM-free for you to obtain, however simply because this option is now obtainable, it’s not a provided that publishers and authors will permit it. That’s as a result of a DRM-free file is less complicated to pirate and illegally distribute in contrast to a locked one, so they could need to proceed to encourage readers to pay up for his or her own copy.

Amazon’s dominance in the e-reader market advantages the client in some methods (99p e-book gross sales, anybody?) but additionally harms the e book market for authors in others (those self same 99p gross sales, to be trustworthy). Whether or not this minor, barely complicated change will shift the publishing market in any respect stays to be seen, however for now, keep an eye in your Kindle account to see in case you’re ready to obtain any of your e-books.