Discovered during the week I was unable to access a Kindle book purchased in 2013. Reason? The order was “too old”, and refund issued to buy again. Which was pointless as the book is now more expensive than when I bought it.

Subsequently discovered 66(!!) other ebooks no longer available for download.

Currently 40 minutes in to a support chat with Amazon.

About to learn, I think, whether we purchase ebooks, or rent them…

[Edit: documenting progress in this thread https://mastodon.online/@monro/109812445178130161]

Rick Monro (@[email protected])

Attached: 1 image The problem first appeared last week, when I attempted to open a book on my Kindle. The book cover appeared in my Library as normal. When I tapped on it, the following message appeared:

Mastodon
@monro oh no. I do not like the sound of that!
@ThePaulMcBride Not the most satisfying of outcomes, but at least I kinda have the books I want again (or will have 🤪)
@monro sounds like a nightmare. I have a kindle purely because it is the best e-reader hardware. I wish I could have my own copy of the books in epub format though.
@ThePaulMcBride @monro This is why i backup all my e-books using Calibre....
@Reea
100% agree with you here. I go to the web, download the AZW version and import it into my calibre library.
Admittedly, I also have hundreds of books in Calibre from before I bought a Kindle, so I also use Calibre for managing all the other content on my Kindle also.

@paulomalley @Reea #Calibre is absolutely Essential for managing my EBooks (some 600+) and yes I get some of it from Amazon.

Someone down a bit in the thread asks if it Cuts Amazon's DRM...why yes, yes it does.

On Android I use MoonPlus Reader (Pro) and it'll cheerfully display Amazon files, DRM or not.

@elfin
How do you do this? I have tried once and was unsuccessful. But I probably missed something. I might want to try again!
@paulomalley @Reea

@elfin

Are you on a Mac?
If so, download the Kindle app
Right click download each book
In Finder, Go menu: Go to Folder
paste ~/Library/Containers/com.amazon.Kindle/

digging through those folders you'll see .azw files.

That's as far as I've gotten, but I hope these files can be used by Calibre.

@skry Nope. Unix.

@elfin

FWIW I read while wasting my time today that Linux Kindle versions were likelier to succeed. The workaround is to use an older version of Kindle to download the books before this format took over.

I also found this FWIW: https://gist.github.com/marccarre/645fe68da31678f9191cd3aafecfea1b

But I agree with you. DRM must always die and so it does.

List all available versions of Kindle for Mac and Kindle for PC.

List all available versions of Kindle for Mac and Kindle for PC. - list_kindle_releases.py

Gist