Amazon will allow ePub and PDF downloads for DRM-free eBooks
39 comments
·December 19, 2025wrxd
This was unexpected. They lost me as a customer when they stopped allowing me to download books I bought and I'm in the Kobo (+ BookLore) side now and I am not coming back.
I wonder how many books are actually DRM-free and are going to be affected by this change. I suspect relatively few, but I would be happy to be wrong
cwillu
But only if the author/publisher explicitly go in and permit it.
This isn't announcing that pdf's and epub's are now available for everything that was drm-free, this is announcing that they will _permit_ pdf's and epub's to be available.
_heimdall
That seems reasonable enough to me though. It should be the publisher's choice what formats of the book they are willing to sell.
inquirerGeneral
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tgsovlerkhgsel
How many books are actually available DRM-free? This reads a bit like "Amazon will provide free land, construct a paddock and provide feed for life if you order a unicorn, except unicorns don't exist".
PaulRobinson
Books enter the public domain. Project Gutenberg and others produce DRM-free versions. Many academics and people who wish to share their knowledge also publish works DRM-free, sometimes under permissive (copyleft), licenses.
The fact you see DRM as the norm and non-DRM as “a unicorn” that “doesn’t exist”, is mildly sad. You should explore all of the above a lot more, and much more besides.
tgsovlerkhgsel
I assumed that that was clear from the context, but let me rephrase it then:
"being made available DRM-free on Amazon" (and I'd narrow that down to "primarily/only on Amazon")
Of course public domain books are DRM free but I'm getting those from Gutenberg, not Amazon. Likewise, the copyleft books I'll most likely download from their own homepages, not Amazon.
I'm aware that DRM free media exists, including for currently copyrighted content that Amazon distributes ;)
input_sh
> Books enter the public domain.
...and then they get re-packaged with DRM on Amazon's store, mostly because people uploading public domain books on Amazon have no idea what they're doing.
> Project Gutenberg and others produce DRM-free versions. Many academics and people who wish to share their knowledge also publish works DRM-free, sometimes under permissive (copyleft), licenses.
You can read DRM-free stuff on a Kindle already, so that's not particularly relevant here.
> The fact you see DRM as the norm and non-DRM as “a unicorn” that “doesn’t exist”, is mildly sad.
When every big publisher is doing it, it is the norm. That doesn't mean there doesn't exist any book publisher which doesn't do this, but the vast, vast majority of the books actually sold today contain DRM. We don't have to like that norm, but pretending it isn't one is just denying reality.
sallveburrpi
Mildly sad is also that you seem to fault GP for not “exploring” more, instead of the insane practice of DRMing everything in the first place. I never have purchased DRM protected media and never will - I’d rather pirate everything digital and but physical hard copies.
PaulRobinson
I don’t actually think it’s their fault, and if they feel I’m faulting them, that wasn’t the intention.
I think it’s sad that what we thought everyone saw as a nonsense is now so normalised that alternatives are just disappearing from view. Everyone should be encouraged to explore.
Piracy is your preferred option, but when that became more mainstream we actually ended up creating the market for more DRM, in the form of iTunes, Spotify and others. I’m not sure I want the future of digital media to be entirely subscription-based like that.
What might be a better solution is showing that media creators can achieve more of their own objectives through releasing media without DRM. This only works if their objectives are not entirely around making money from media sales, and more aligned to influence, or audience building.
I’m actually surprised at this point that musicians - given they don’t make money from streaming services and see them as tools to build audiences for live tours where they really make their money - don’t just jump over already.
amluto
All books published by Tor are DRM-free.
jwalton
And Baen. Baen has a storefront of their own online at https://www.baen.com/.
syntaxing
Just get a kobo instead. The price difference between with ads and a new kobo is minimal. Not worth the Amazon headache with a locked down device.
Flimm
The eBooks in Kobo's store are also locked down with DRM.
icedrift
Thing is Kindle hardware is significantly better and cheaper. If you don't mind tinkering get a kindle and jailbreak it to remove ads and add koreader.
rgegerge
There are two single line comments recommending kobo over kindle in this thread. How do I know this is a genuine recommendation and not astroturfing?
forinti
I have both. The Kindle is a better device overall, but the I like Kobo's software better.
What I found disappointing was when I had to swap out the screen on the Kobo and found that it was glued and that the battery was soldered. I managed to do fix it, but I don't like things that are unnecessarily hard to fix.
TheSilva
Too little too late, already ditched the whole ecosystem after so many years and devices.
bambax
Same. I'm done.
strawhatdev
I wonder if this is in response to Bookshop.org's DRM free e-book shop. I buy a lot of e-books and have completely switched over because of that feature.
jwalton
Bookshop.org has a DRM free section? Where do I find such a thing?
gizzlon
Cool, but quite a small subset are DRM-free. OTOH. its seems like all the audiobooks on libro.fm are DRM-free?
https://support.libro.fm/support/solutions/articles/48000695...
SoKamil
I hope they will allow me to download e-books that I uploaded through their upload site.
I do backups but better be safe than sorry.
ggm
So Gutenberg and the internet archive could monetise click through links or an affiliate program? No disrespect intended, if this meant we could fund them with Amazon pitching in some vig I'd think about it. Mind you, they'd probably make more with direct donation per person, but Amazon could drive many multiples more via the store.
Flimm
Can anyone find even one DRM-free ebook on Amazon Kindle?
p0w3n3d
So much for your master’s mercy
Hah, they actually did a slight rollback! When I first heard about them stopping the downloads, I immediately downloaded all the books I purchased from Amazon and went from buying ~1 book per week to 0. Seems a lot of us doing so had some sort of effect.
Unfortunately, it seems like this will be chosen by the publisher, so of course probably most of the books won't be downloadable at all, and Amazon can now point their finger at the publisher instead of taking the blame themselves. Publishers was probably always the reason behind the move, but at least now Amazon have someone else to blame, which I guess is great for them.