- Kindle e-books are now available DRM-free
- This means you can read them on other readers
- But publishers and authors must register first
Kindle e-books have a lot going for them – there’s a huge selection of them in the Amazon Kindle store and you can read them on some of the best readers – but they also have a big problem in terms of DRM (digital rights management).
This means that Kindle books can only be read on Kindle devices or the Kindle app. So if you have other brands of ereader that you’d like to read on, or devices that lack the Kindle app, you’re out of luck. But that may be about to change.
Amazon has now rolled out a DRM-free option for e-books, allowing authors and publishers to choose whether or not to apply this DRM. For all books that do not have DRM, you will find the option to download an EPUB or PDF version under the ‘More Actions’ drop-down menu in the ‘Digital Content’ section of your Amazon account.
These formats are much more widely supported, so you can read your books on almost any device that supports e-books or documents. So that’s great to see, and it could mean you’re less locked into a single ecosystem.
A nice feature that publishers may not use
But there is a catch. Well, actually there are two catches, but the biggest one is that this is voluntary and we might not see many publishers opting to remove DRM – as it also makes it easier for people to pirate the books.
In fact, as Goodereader notes, no major publishers seem to offer DRM-free Kindle books yet. That may change—after all, the feature has only just launched, but it also might not. So you’re probably more likely to see this option from small publishers and self-published works.
The other catch is that there currently doesn’t seem to be a way to tell if a book is available without DRM until you’ve purchased it, so you can’t really make purchasing decisions based on this feature. It seems like it would be an easy fix for Amazon, although it might not be something the company wants to do.
In other words, this DRM-free option seems a lot like a ‘wait and see’ feature – it has game-changing potential, but unless or until it’s widely embraced, its usefulness will be limited.
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