I’m interrupting my usual posting cadence for those seven or nine regular readers who might also have a number of Kindle purchases. Basically, as of February 26th, Amazon is removing the ability for you to download purchases as copies over which you have full control.
For more information, you can check out Andrew Liszewski’s piece for The Verge that, like many of us, you may have missed on Valentine’s Day or read David Gewirtz’ article from yesterday on ZD Net. I actually came across it from a couple book vloggers on YouTube (here and here) that the algorithm served up… and, seeing that one needs to download local copies one at a time, some of you may want to budget some time between now and the 25th to secure your purchases.
The articles and videos do go over some of the situations where your purchases may be pulled back or altered, though the folks who might be already alarmed by this are likely already thinking about such circumstances.
I have not gone deep into Kindle in part thanks to the utility of my local libaries and Libby… and because many indie authors I follow offer DRM-free digital copies.
I’m not opposed to subscriptions per se, including streaming services like Netflix, but this is a reminder that if you really want to hold onto that book/film/album, you need a copy that you control.