| Hey, I've been getting lots of emails about Amazon's DRM announcement – from those not sure what choice to make, and those of you who are particularly concerned about readers getting the option to download PDFs. I've read a bunch of articles on this, which have missed some key points. This email is going out a couple of days late because I republished one of my books to test this… and things got very weird! amazon's announcement KDP sent an email in December saying that, from 20 January 2026, Amazon would "make it easier for readers to enjoy content they have purchased from the Kindle store across a wider range of devices and applications." In short, it was giving authors new DRM options. If you chose to apply DRM to your work, nothing would change. However, if you chose not to apply DRM to your work, readers would now have the possibility to download EPUB and PDF versions of your books. The email didn't say much else, other than providing instructions for how to change the DRM status of already published books (it's in the Content section of the three-step publishing interface, BTW), but it did link to this Help Page. Which is written in what I'd call typical Amazon style – i.e. reflexively vague. This has led to understandable confusion. the drm question In simple terms, ebooks are basically a bunch of HTML pages with a wrapper around them, and DRM is basically a padlock on that wrapper which acts as a kind of piracy protection. Some people are in favor of DRM because it nominally prevents readers from engaging in things like file-sharing, plagiarism, or onward selling of their work. Others are against DRM because it is not very effective at stopping any of those things, but has unintended consequences like chaining readers legally purchased books to one store or device. For example, sometimes I like to read the Kindle books I have purchased on my Remarkable but if you have DRM enabled, I'm unable to do that. And if I decided to switch from Kindle to Kobo, I would only be able to bring the books with me that had no DRM. I think authors are entitled to make their own decisions on how they choose to protect their work and I'm not trying to convince you one way or the other here. I'm not personally in favor of DRM so I don't usually apply it to my work. If you choose to apply DRM to your books, that's your choice. The purpose of this email is not to try and change your mind. I just want everyone to be informed about what the new choices mean. But, even for someone with my views on DRM, the PDF download option is a curveball. your new choice Let's clear up some of the confusion I'm seeing in your emails: - Regardless of your decision, readers will continue to be able to enjoy your books on Kindle devices and Kindle apps.
- If you choose to enable DRM on newly published books, readers will not be able to download copies of your work, or read it on non-Amazon devices/apps.
- If you choose not to enable DRM on newly published books, readers will have the option of downloading your books in EPUB or PDF format, and will be able to read your work on non-Amazon devices/apps.
- For previously published books, if you chose to enable DRM, nothing changes and you don't need to do anything.
- If you have previously chosen not to enable DRM on previously published work, readers do not suddenly have the ability to download your books – you must explicitly choose that option in KDP. You don't need to decide right away – this is part of what I was testing over the weekend – but you will not be able to publish any changes on an older book with DRM disabled until you make that decision. I wasn't even able to publish a price change without making my choice on that.
- For Kindle Unlimited, nothing changes. Borrowers will not have the ability to download copies of your books regardless of your decision on DRM.
- Your decision is no longer final. You can now change your DRM settings at any time – which is a welcome change for sure as previously you were locked into your choice forever. However, if readers have previously downloaded your work because of your DRM choices, they will be able to keep those copies.
I should also note – as it doesn't seem to be widely known – that readers could always historically download copies of Kindle books they had purchased through a kind of back-door method. At least as long as I have owned a Kindle (i.e. since 2011), readers could download copies of books they owned simply by connecting their Kindle to a computer with a USB cord. Sure, if DRM was enabled, they wouldn't be able to open the file (unless they cracked the DRM – the legal status of which varies from country-to-country). But if DRM wasn't enabled, readers could always download copies of books they had purchased and back them up to their computer or read them on other devices, if they wished. So, permitting readers to download EPUBs is nothing that new; it's just the way it happens which has changed a little. PDFs are another matter. Even though I personally have always opted not to put DRM on my work, when given the choice, I was often wary when someone emailed me requesting a PDF edition of book they claimed to have purchased – something most writers have probably experienced. Why would Amazon give readers that option now? This is 100% speculation on my part – because Amazon hasn't told us – but I suspect this is down to the Kindle Scribe. Its software and user experience is lagging behind competitors like the Remarkable 2 and Amazon has working on increasing the functionality. I know from my own experience with the Remarkable 2 that marking up EPUBs is not ideal – because of the reflowable nature of the files. In plain English, if you change any of the settings – font size etc. – then all your markups get messed up and move all over the place. However, if you convert the file to PDF, that fixes the text in place so you can annotate safely. My theory is that Amazon is going to add this functionality to the Kindle Scribe. So, maybe it's that. And if that's what this is, I guess I'm okay with it. But I really do wish Amazon would explain its decision here. Perhaps more people would be fine with it if they explained themselves. But maybe – really stressing the maybe here – this is all a storm in a teacup when you look at the implementation of this change on the reader side. what do readers see? I don't think most readers are going to know about this change, let alone avail of the download option. And the reason why is because I tested this over the weekend and it's… deeply strange. I republished one of my books – my permafree for authors, Let's Get Digital – and elected to disable DRM and enable EPUB/PDF downloads. So, you can verify what I'm saying and test this yourself, if you wish. It's not like Amazon puts a big download button in the confirmation messages when a reader buys a book, or even marks the DRM status of a book on the product page. All that has changed – as far as I can tell – is that readers have an EPUB/PDF download option if they navigate to Manage my Digital Content on the Amazon site itself, and find the book they wish to download. If they click the button pictured above, More actions, a dropdown of six or seven options will appear for managing the content - including Download EPUB/PDF (on books with the respective permissions granted only). Clicking that will then trigger the download of a zip file to their computer; it's not exactly the most obvious or user-friendly experience. But what's inside the zip file? This is where things get super weird. Because what you get is a bunch of CSS and XHTML files – like an uncompiled ebook. It was somewhat amusing that after all this faff, you don't actually get a readable PDF or EPUB file. Presumably you would have to compile it in something like Caliber first – and have the technical knowhow to do so, of course. One of the files in a subfolder does enable you to read it in your browser in a very rudimentary fashion – which readers can already do on the Amazon site anyway in a much more pleasant manner... regardless of your DRM choices, LOL. Maybe Amazon plans to clean up the experience on the reader side – because right now it's a total mess. But as-is, even if you choose to enable downloads, readers aren't getting anything that 99.9% of them will be able to use anyway! So… yeah. Dave P.S. Music this week is John Cale with You Know More Than I Know. | 
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