How I got my e-books off Amazon

Read the full accompanying Medium article here 🔻

⛓️‍💥Amazon Divorce Proceedings: Kindle Assets

Step-by-step instructions

⚠️ This is for educational purposes only. I do not endorse piracy. These steps are about regaining control over legitimately purchased content. In some countries, removing DRM from e-books you purchased is a legal gray area; proceed at your own discretion.

☝️ Note: I am a PC person with a Windows device and these instructions reflect that.

What you’ll need

PC instructions

⭕ This icon identifies steps that are only required if you already have the Kindle app and/or Kindle e-books downloaded onto your computer. If you do not, you can skip these steps.

  1. Enable 2-step verification for your Amazon account. When I first tried logging into the old 1.17 Kindle version, I got errors and was prompted to reset my password. I did, and it still wouldn’t let me log in. Trying to fix another problem, I enabled 2-step verification, and that solved the login issue.
    1. Go to Amazon.com
    2. Login
    3. Click “Hello [Name] Account & Lists” in the upper right
    4. Click “Login & security”, top-middle tile
    5. Next to “2-step verification”, click “Manage”
    6. Follow instructions to set up 2-step verification
  2. ⭕ Note where Kindle saves your downloaded content. You’ll need this later.
    1. Open the Kindle app
    2. Click “Tools”
    3. Select “Options”
    4. Click “Content” from the sidebar menu
    5. Note the file path displayed under “Current content folder”. If you didn’t change from the default, it is probably something like C:\Users\[NAME]\OneDrive\Documents\My Kindle Content
    6. Click Cancel
    7. Close the Kindle app
  3. ⭕ Uninstall your current Kindle for PC app. Versions 1.25 and higher encrypt your downloads. You may have your own way of doing this, but here’s how I go about it.
    1. Go to Settings
    2. Search for “uninstall”
    3. Select “Add or remove programs”
    4. Search for Kindle
    5. Click the more icon (three dots)
    6. Select “Uninstall”
    7. Confirm in pop-ups
  4. ⭕ Remove Kindle e-book files from your computer. If you have downloaded e-books onto your PC from a newer version of the Kindle app, then they will not work with calibre.
    1. Open File Explorer
    2. Go to the folder from Step 2, where Kindle was saving downloaded e-books
    3. Delete all files in that folder (no need to delete the folder itself)
  5. Install Kindle for PC version 1.17. This specific older version downloads e-books without DRM protection. This is what we need for adding e-books to calibre. I don’t have a lot of experience downloading older versions of apps, so it took me awhile to find a download that worked, but you do you – I am just offering the links I used to save you the time.
    1. Download Kindle for PC version 1.17
    2. Install Kindle 1.17
    3. When it finishes installing, it will open automatically
    4. Click “Tools”
    5. Select “Options”
    6. In General, de-select the “Automatically install updates…” checkbox
    7. Click Save