Amazon Ends Kindle Sideloading

In the latest instance of a Big Tech firm further eroding consumer rights, Amazon has announced that it will deny Kindle users the aiblity to transfer eBooks to their ereaders via USB, a process known as “sideloading”.

As you might expect, this draconian measure has sparked a backlash among readers—especially those who recall Amazon’s history of deleting books from customers’ devices.

Photo: Ada Wang

Say goodbye to sideloading your Kindle ebooks! If you haven't downloaded your Kindle ebooks by the 26th of February, you'll never be able to use them on another device again.

According to Amazon, they will be removing the Download & Transfer via USB option from readers' Kindle Content Libraries on the 26th of February, disabling readers' ability to directly download purchased ebooks from their Amazon accounts.

Amazon taking away customers’ ability to sideload their Kindles may not seem like a big loss to some. But consider the change’s full effects …

Readers won’t be able to:

• copy Kindle ebooks to Kindle e-readers using an USB cable,

• store ebooks separately from their Kindle device or app,

• back up their ebooks, or

• read them anywhere other than Amazon’s own Kindle environment.

When readers select the Download & Transfer via USB option from their account, Amazon currently displays the following notice:

If you only ever read your Amazon ebooks on a Kindle e-reader or app and are not concerned with backing up your ebooks or reading them anywhere else, this change likely won’t impact you.

You’ll continue to sync your Kindle over wi-fi, the ebooks you’ve bought will appear, and you’ll be able to read them as usual. But owners of early Kindle e-readers, such as the Kindle Keyboard, may not even have this option.

Kindle owners found it inconvenient when Amazon stopped their ereaders from displaying tables of contents in books not made with their proprietary eBook creation software. That was annoying; this overstep could be the last straw for many already frustrated customers.

So, what can Kindle owners do?

If you buy ebooks from Amazon to read on a non-Kindle devices (or even to backup!), you’ll have two options. Either install the outdated Kindle app on a computer (if you have access to one) and attempt to download your ebooks that way, or buy a Kindle device to read your ebooks.

However, the implcations aren’t reassuring.

Reading between the lines, this confirms that Amazon customers can no longer read their Kindle ebooks on a different device or app.

I’ve been warning readers and authors alike of signs that the Amazon era of newpub is rapidly coming to an end.

Related: Neopatronage — Seek and You Will Find

And I had enough confidence in those signs to take my own advice. That’s why Kairos Publications had our own independent store up and running over a month before Amazon pulled the plug on sideloading.

Not only do we offer my full catalog of best selling and award-winning books, we keep them DRM-free in easily transferable format. And we do it all while underselling Amazon.

Best of all, we’ll never remotely erase your legitimately purchased digital goods from your devices.

So get great books you get to keep your way for less than you’d pay through KDP. Shop the Kairos store now.

And you’ll want to bookmark the store tab, because we’ve got a brand-new exciting release coming up soon!