Amazon to allow downloads of DRM free books

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Here they sell all ebooks in Estonian as watermarked epubs without DRM, including translations. While any originals in English are sold with Adobe DRM, if the publisher wants to have DRM.

If the original is in English, I still prefer that to the Estonian translation, because Estonian ebooks are more expensive and the Adobe DRM is easy to remove.

So it sounds like translations of recent popular titles obviously have different publishing deals than the original titles. Makes sense, I guess.

[solitarywolf]

It appears the DRM free books will be only for books published after Dec 9. Back catalog's will not be unlocked unless the publisher or author allows them to be stripped of the DRM.

https://www.howtogeek.com/amazon-wil...s-without-drm/

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by jhowell

Because that is the format that all other e-book platforms use. (A surprisingly good thing coming from Amazon.)

I wonder if the big publishers pressured them.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I wonder if the big publishers pressured them.

Most big publishers use DRM, so this wouldn't apply to their books.

[pdurrant]

This is excellent news. I suspect it might be after publishers like TOR complained that their DRM-free ebooks weren't available DRM-free on Amazon.

But it's too late for me - I'll continue buying from Kobo, as it's turned out to be cheaper with Kobo's price matching and gift card offers.

Until something changes again.

[rantanplan]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Most big publishers use DRM, so this wouldn't apply to their books.

I go out of my way to find drm free bocks and I’m more successful than not, most of the time.


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[theducks]

The only ones that suffered when the Download option went away, was the Author.

OTOH that option did help my TBR backlog

[el_vandragon]

It is annoying that older titles will not have it enabled even if they have "Simultaneous device usage: Unlimited" marked on the book, but it is better than nothing. I will likely still avoid Kindle store for the most part but for a few indie authors who post only on kindle so that they can gain access to Kindle Unlimited users I may consider buying their titles again when DRM free

[hyegeek]

Originally Posted by el_vandragon

I will likely still avoid Kindle store for the most part

That's how I feel as well. They've shown themselves to be quite hostel to their customers for too long for a quick fix. It will take some time for me to start trusting them again.

On that note, I can't tell if this change will be something we can tell before we buy or not. My reading tells me we can assume an EPUB on DRM free items published after 1/20/26, but it would not surprise me if we actually end up with two types of "DRM free" depending on which switches the authors/publishers flip and we won't know if there is on EPUB until after we purchase.

[vermontcathy]

Originally Posted by solitarywolf

It appears the DRM free books will be only for books published after Dec 9. Back catalog's will not be unlocked unless the publisher or author allows them to be stripped of the DRM.

https://www.howtogeek.com/amazon-wil...s-without-drm/

I've published some books on KDP (public domain books where I fastidiously found and formatted all the original illustrations). I marked them as DRM-free at the time. I now have to go into KDP and check a box saying that I understand the situation and I want buyers to be able to download an ePub.

So, it does apply to previously-published books, IF the publishers go in and check off that box.

[vermontcathy]

Originally Posted by jhowell

That would be great but it seems unlikely to me.

Remember, this is Amazon. They allow books to be upload in a variety of formats, including DOCX. That is likely popular with self-publishers. And they allow editing of the uploaded content within their software before actually publishing it. Those features make it likely that they will just convert from their internal format to EPUB for downloading.

As a test I took a simple EPUB, converted it to Amazon's Kindle Publishing Format (KPF) using the Kindle Previewer and then back to EPUB using Kindle Create. Here are the results.

Original:


After conversion:


With CSS:



Perhaps the downloads they provide will be better than that, but I doubt it.

What difference does it make what the back-end code looks like, as long as it looks good on the kindle? When converting books to ePub in Calibre, Calibre seems to make more CSS groups than it needs to, but I don't care as long as it looks the way I want it to look on the kindle.

[drofgnal]

Unless this expands to include more books than those stated, this announcement from Amazon isn't likely to stem the tide of people going elsewhere or get those who have to come back.

What may make me bolt is the 'deals of the day' seems to have disappeared. They've revamped their deals page, but it seems largely static and doesn't have the deals of the day much anymore, occasionally a 'today only', but that is becoming more rare. I've started comparing to kobo now, but haven't taken the plunge.

[JSWolf]

I'm curious to compare Amazon's ePub vs the ePub from another shop that sells ePub. I want to know if amazon is giving us the real ePub or just converting the Kindle version to ePub.

[Scoob]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I'm curious to compare Amazon's ePub vs the ePub from another shop that sells ePub. I want to know if amazon is giving us the real ePub or just converting the Kindle version to ePub.

In my headcanon, it's some Amazon CS rep using the same methods we use to generate the drm free epub.

[tomsem]

So will the KFX download be DRM free for these books now? Is there one that I can try (assuming nobody else has done so)?