In their great unwisdom, Amazon recently decided to remove the feature that allowed you to download the Kindle books you’d purchased from them via the web. You could then remove the DRM from the downloaded books so that you could use them on non-Kindle devices or back them up in case Amazon ever decided to permanently remove them from your Kindle or you lose your Amazon account. Obviously you should only have done this if DRM removal Is legal in your jurisdiction of course. Hmm.

Anyway, there are still (much less convenient) ways to download your books if you have either an older Kindle - although I hear if your Kindle is the black-and-white type then your covers and images. might all come out as monochrome as they are on your Kindle if you go this way - or access to a Windows computer, which preserves the colour. But the previous method I used to to remove the DRM doesn’t work any more.

However the file-liberating geniuses out there have figured that you can still remove the DRM, freeing your purchased files, if you try a slightly different method that involves an old version of the Windows Kindle software, Calibre and an extra plugin.

Here’s a description of how to go about it.

Install Calibre, along with the following two plugins.

  • DeDRM plugin - current version is 10.0.9. Installation instructions in my previous post
  • KFX Input plugin - current version is 2.22.0. You can install this from inside Calibre by going to Preferences -> Plugins -> Get new plugins -> Search for KFX -> Select to install “KFX Input”

Download Kindle for PC - but the trick here is it must be version 2.4.0 (70904). A current link to the right version is this. Newer versions won’t work.

Download the batch file disable_k4pc_download.bat from here - discussion about that starts here. It will create a file so as to prevent Kindle for PC auto updating. May or may not be strictly necessary.

Install the above Kindle for PC version as per usual. I turned off internet connectivity whilst doing this although that might not be essential, I’m not sure. The main point is that don’t want to give the software a chance to update itself to a new version from which you won’t be able to remove the DRM from your books. As soon as it was installed I went to Tools -> Options and turned off “Automatically install updates when they are available without asking me”.

Then run the file disable_k4pc_download.bat.

Turn internet back on and sign into Kindle for PC with your Amazon account as usual.

You can then right-click and download any book. They will download to somewhere on your disk; by default your Documents folder in a subfolder called My Kindle Content. You should then be able to add them to Calibre as normal (the Add Book option) and DRM will be stripped. At least for most books; apparently some special ones remain impervious to this.

The main issue I have with the above is that Kindle for PC doesn’t seem to be able to find or open any books shared with you via the Amazon Household feature. I’m not sure if there’s any way around this at present other than logging in as the person who shared them with you.