You don't own the e-books you buy. And it just got worse

When you buy things but they aren't yours

I need to rant.

Kindle is, as of the 26th of February 2025, removing the possibility to download your e-books from your kindle onto your PC. Your e-books will have to live on your Kindle forever now. This is the final seal at locking away your books into the Amazon cloud.

How did I find out about this change? I didn't get an email. There are no obvious notifications in my Amazon account either. The only place Amazon notifies you of this is when you try to download an e-book from your account, which you're not doing every day. So tons of people won't be aware of this change.

You only get notified when you click on the download button (sorry this is in French as it’s my account)

I have the Youtube algorithm to thank for for notifying me. The platform served me a video of a youtuber announcing it. This has been picked up by tons of Youtube sleuths who are actively warning their followers of this, because Amazon clearly isn't.

I've been able to cut Amazon out of life for years now, except when it comes to my Kindle.

For a book lover like me who spent years of her life moving to a different country every two years, having a kindle did something that I'm still incredibly grateful for. It allowed me to keep reading. I, fact I read a lot more than I was used to thanks to it. The convenience was addictive, and addicted I was.

Now that I've stopped upending my life so often and live in a house with actual bookshelves, I've gone back to reading physical books a lot more. I have my local bookstores that I visit often, and I'm more than happy to give up the convenience of getting a book instantly in favour of physical books bought locally.

But my Kindle was still precious to me (until now). I have hundreds of books on there. Books that are mine, I thought naively. I like having a e-reader for when I'm travelling, and I'll still buy the occasional e-book.

But I'm officially done. Not with e-readers. But with Kindle specifically. And Amazon.

Defacing ownership

Why is this so significant? On the face of it, this change might not sound like such a big deal.

But it IS a big deal. We're beginning to (finally) wake up to the reality that the very meaning of ownership has changed. And not for the better, at least not for us.

For the sake of comfort and convenience, we've allowed ourselves to modify our behaviour, one seemingly insignificant habit at a time, and give up our control and ownership. Now we're left with things we still pay for, but do not own.

When you're excitedly pressing the 'buy in one click' button and downloading your e-book onto your Kindle, you haven't made a purchase. You've made a lease. This is the deal now with all of these tech platforms; at least with Spotify you know you're paying them monthly not to own, but to stream music. But with e-books, because they use the word 'buy' and because you're only paying once like a normal purchase, you're tricked into thinking you own the e-book. But you don't.

Amazon’s been slowly stripping your rights away over the years, and doing so legally as they update their terms and conditions. You used to be able to lend your e-books to other Kindle users, this has been stopped in 2022. I still remember trying to figure how to actually do the lending. For a company that's supposedly all about customer centricity, it's crazy how difficult this was to figure out before they decided we shouldn't even be bothered trying to lend stuff and should just stick to 'buying'.

But what Amazon is certainly not discontinuing is the right to change the contents and the cover of e-books, or to outright delete them from your Kindle if they so choose.

source

The problem with not even being able to download the e-book on your computer is that those changes can happen without you even noticing they've happened. You might notice a book cover change, but you won't necessarily notice if the contents of the books have changed.

This reminds me of a passage in George Orwell's 1984, which ironically was the book that was deleted from people's Kindles because of a copyright infringement issue from a bookseller on Amazon.

“Very likely as many as a dozen people were now working away on rival versions of what Big Brother had actually said. And presently some master brain in the Inner Party would select this version or that, would re-edit it and set in motion the complex processes of cross-referencing that would be required, and then the chosen lie would pass into the permanent records and become truth”.

1984

Can Amazon turn into a master brain, selecting versions of the truth that's deemed acceptable? Let's look at the numbers. Amazon owns 50% of the printed books market, and 70% of the e-books market. These numbers are ginormous, and they're clearly claiming more and more rights to do whatever the hell they want, whenever they want to, screwing everyone from readers, independent bookstores, authors and publishers in the process, and even tampering with the contents of the books or censoring them if they so wish.

So yes, of course they can. They already are.

source

What now?

This is a giant kick in the butt for me to get these brands entirely out of my life. I want to take an even more active stance at looking for alternatives, and resist the urge, as best I can, to bow to a supposed convenience that’s turning out to be a winners-take-all game at our expense. I know this is not an easy path, which is a horrifying testament to how these companies have weaved themselves into the very fabric of our lives.

But we have to disengage completely. This is a fight worth fighting for.

For now, I'll start with downloading my e-books and parting with my Kindle. Here's a Youtube video on how to bulk download your e-books. Because of course, Amazon will only allow you to download them one at at time. Until the 26th of Feb that is.

How about you? Will this change impact how you read?

My worn-out copy of 1984 that’s mine for real