Kindle – Act now if you want to download your books

Amazon are reportedly removing the capability to download purchased Kindle books to your computer on February 26th.

After then, the only way to access your purchased content will be through Amazon devices, their web site or Amazon apps as the signed-in user who bought them. If that’s how you use Kindle books, never think you’ll stop using Amazon, and are happy for your access to die with you, nothing will change.

If you thought you bought the books, rather than bought a license to read via Amazon’s channels, you can still download them until Feb 26th.

Go to your account and "Content Library". As far as I can recall, you have to download each book one by one. You’ll then have a local copy, in Amazon’s ebook format. If you wish, there are ways to change the format (and remove the DRM, which I won’t detail here) so you can read these on other platforms or without needing to be signed in to an Amazon device or service.

But in a week’s time, you won’t have that option again. So if you ever think you might want a local backup with some options outside Amazon, best to download now I think.