This is a mirror from a reddit post. Archiving here for future reference. Credit goes to TexasNiteowl. I can't answer any questions regarding this.

Archive link to reddit post

2025 Guide for freeing books from Amazon

(from Feb. 27, 2025 after the download & transfer option was removed)

Some books may simply not work. There are publishers out there that have hardened DRM, which includes some textbooks particularly. I have no idea if comics/manga/graphic novels will work. But the following information will work for many ‘regular’ books.

Identifying your Options

• If you have a physical e-Ink kindle (not a Fire tablet) that is 3rd generation through 11th generation, you have 2 options: Wifi Delivery OR Kindle for PC.

• If you have a physical e-Ink kindle (not a Fire tablet) from the 2024 releases, there is some confusion or uncertainty as to whether Wifi Delivery will work based on whether Calibre can recognize your device and navigate the folder structure. You can try Wifi Delivery and if unsuccessful you can use Kindle for PC. I have been told a Colorsoft did work. I have been told a basic did work. But I do not have any 2024 model to test myself. I've seen reference this might be more of an issue on macs due to number of mtp connections that can be open? But I'm no expert.

• If you only have a Fire tablet, your only option is to use Kindle for PC.

• If you have NO physical kindle, your only option is to use Kindle for PC.

Wifi Delivery

This method involves sending your purchased books to your kindle device and then connecting your kindle to your computer by USB and importing the books from your kindle into Calibre.

• What is needed for this to work:
  • A kindle that can connect to wifi and receive books sent/delivered by Amazon.
  • Calibre (currently 7.26)
  • DeDRM plugin (currently 10.0.9)
  • The serial number of the kindle being used. The serial number must be added to the DeDRM plugin customization.
  • KFX Input plugin (currently 2.22.0)
• Steps:
  • From your Amazon content library, send/deliver the books to your kindle
  • Make sure the books have been received on your device
  • Open Calibre and then connect your kindle to your computer
  • A “Device” button should appear in the menu row of Calibre
  • Click on that Device button; the view should now change to show you the books that are on your kindle
  • Select the books that you wish to import (or select all if you want)
  • Right click on the books and choose “Add to Library”
  • Calibre will now send the books from your device to your library and will attempt to DeDRM them
  • When the job is done, click the “Library” button to switch back to your library
  • Verify that dedrm was successful (2 options)
    • Option 1: Select the books that you imported and convert them to another format such as epub. If conversion is successful, dedrm worked.
    • Option 2: View the formats present in Calibre. In general, “kfx” formats worked and “kfx-zip” likely did not work. HOWEVER, if you have a very old device (K3/K4/K5/PW1), they deliver files in azw and azw3 formats instead of kfx. For those files, either double click on the book to open it or convert them to another format such as epub.

Recommendation: limit the number of books you do at one time; I have seen reports of books failing if dedrm gets overwhelmed with too many books at one time. (In fact, I had 6 books fail when I did a large batch of books but when I retried those 6 books alone, they worked fine.)

Note: K3/K4/K5/PW1 will download the files in azw/azw3 formats. K6/PW2 and newer, including Voyage and Oasis, will download in kfx format. One difference to be noted is that kfx files are “optimized” for the device and so for b&w eInk displays, any color covers or color illustrations are changed to be b&w. Exception is likely the Colorsoft (but I don’t have one and can’t verify).

Kindle for PC

This method involves downloading your books to your computer using the Kindle for PC software and then importing the books into Calibre.

Note: Kindle for MAC will not work! If you only own a Mac, you will need to run a Windows VM. I know one way to do this using Parallels but I don’t know if there are other methods, etc.

• What is needed for this to work:
  • Kindle for PC v2.4.0. Newer versions will NOT work. (Note: K4PC v1.17 will still download books published before Jan. 2023 to the best of my knowledge. But for more recent books 1.17 will not work. See other notes about 1.17 below.)
  • Calibre (currently 7.26)
  • DeDRM plugin (currently 10.0.9)
  • KFX Input plugin (currently 2.22.0)

Installing K4PC

The most important things about installing K4PC is that the version must be 2.4.0 or older and auto-updates must be turned off. During my install of K4PC 2.4.0, immediately after install and before registering/logging into Amazon, I was able to access the menus and change the settings to uncheck the auto updates option. Other people have not been able to do this successfully. Some instructions advise disabling your internet access while installing K4PC until after you are able to change the auto update setting. One other method is to use a batch file to create a file that in theory blocks the update folder from being created. Here are links to discussion about these methods:

See this thread for more information about Calibre installation and/or removal of other versions and reinstallation: https://www.reddit.com/r/Calibre/comments/1c2ryfz/comment/lhtaln2/

See this thread at mobileread for information about the batch file to prevent updates: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=283371

Using K4PC and importing to Calibre

I am presenting two methods here because of the way that books are identified in K4PC. In short, when the books are downloaded into K4PC and placed on your computer, they are not easily identifiable in your “My Kindle Content” library folder. They use Amazon’s ASIN identification string instead of an identifiable title. This is no big deal on an initial import of a large number of books when you can import from multiple folders, but can be an issue if you are trying to locate and import one single book.

• Scenario 1: Downloading an individual book (ie. made a new purchase and adding just one book to my existing library)
  • Open K4PC and confirm it did not update and is still on v2.4.0
  • Initiate the download of the desired book
  • When the download is complete, you may close K4PC
  • Option 1: Drag and Drop file from a file folder
    • Go to your K4PC library location (default is C:\Users\*username*\documents\My Kindle Content)
    • Sort the folders by date with most recent first
    • Go into the most recent folder and drag the .azw file into Calibre
    • Calibre will add the book and attempt to dedrm it
    • Check the format shown for the book: in general a “KFX” format indicates success and “KFX-ZIP” indicates failure; alternately, convert the book to epub or another format – if the convert completes, drm removal was successful
  • Option 2: Add the book from inside Calibre
    • Open Calibre and click the Add Books button
    • In the “Select Books” window go to the most recent folder in your My Kindle Content location (C:\Users\*username*\documents\My Kindle Content) and select the *filename*_ebok.azw file
    • Calibre will add the book and attempt to dedrm it
    • Check the format shown for the book: in general a “KFX” format indicates success and “KFX-ZIP” indicates failure; alternately, convert the book to epub or another format – if the convert completes, drm removal was successful
• Scenario 2: Initial download of all purchases (ie. a lot of books!)
  • Open K4PC and confirm it did not update and is still on v2.4.0
  • Initiate the download of the desired books (see note below about collections)
  • When the download is complete, you may close K4PC
  • Open Calibre
  • On the side of the “Add Books” button is a small expansion arrow, click that and choose “Control the adding of books”
  • In the new “Adding Books” window, click the middle tab “Adding Actions”
  • Click the “Rules to filter added files” next to “Control which files are added during bulk imports”
  • Click “Add rule”
  • You will add a total of 4 rules
    • Ignore the file, if the filename ends with: .voucher
    • Ignore the file, if the filename ends with: .phl
    • Ignore the file, if the filename ends with: .md
    • Ignore the file, if the filename ends with: .res
    • Click Apply
  • Click the arrow next to “Add books” again and choose “Add from folders and sub-folders”
  • On the “Multi-file books?” popup window, choose “yes”
  • Choose your K4PC library folder (ie. c:\users\username\documents\My Kindle Content)
  • Calibre will begin the import and add and dedrm the books
  • Check the format shown for the books: in general a “KFX” format indicates success and “KFX-ZIP” indicates failure; alternately, do a bulk convert process and convert the books to epub or another format – if the convert completes, drm removal was successful
  • If most books work, but a handful show kfx-zip, identify the ASIN (Amazon identifier = folder name) for those books and then remove them and re-add them individually. Occasionally dedrm might get slightly overwhelmed and blip. This did happen to me. Out of over 1400 books, 6 ended up as kfx-zip. But when I deleted them and then re-added them one at a time, they worked fine.

Congrats! You have freed your purchased books! You may now use them on your Kobo or other device.

About Collections

When you are doing the initial download of multiple books, you may consider putting them in collections which will allow you to download multiple books without clicking on each and every book.

In your content library on the Amazon website, look at your book purchases. Each page has 25 books per page. Select all and add to a collection. Go to the next page and do the same. I would not make the collections too large, but I did collections of 150-200 books (ie. 6-8 pages of books). Then, when downloading in K4PC you can download an entire collection at once instead of having to click and download each book.

About K4PC 1.17

This very old version of K4PC will download books published before Jan. 2023 (and maybe a few after). 1.17 also downloads books in azw or azw3 format which is different from the kfx versions downloaded by 2.4.0. The azw/azw3 files downloaded by 1.17 are self-contained single file books. 2.4.0 KFX downloads are comprised of multiple files. Even though the 2.4.0 KFX downloads contain an azw file as one of the files, the file is not the same as the azw file that 1.17 might download. In short, even though they might have the same/similar extension, 1.17 azw files and 2.4.0 azw files do not work the same way.

Links:

• Calibre: https://calibre-ebook.com/download
• DeDRM: https://github.com/noDRM/DeDRM/_tools
  • Note: If using the Wifi Delivery method, do not forget to add your serial number to the customization area of the plugin after installation.
  • Note: Do not download the stable 10.0.3 release; read the readme and download the 10.0.9 version
  • If you have continued failures with the 10.0.9 release, consider trying the alpha release which is also linked from the readme
• KFX Input: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=291290
  • Note: installation is done within Calibre (Preferences > Plugins); this link is to a thread maintained by the plugin author
• K4PC v2.4.0: https://kindleforpc.s3.amazonaws.com/70904/KindleForPC-installer-2.4.70904.exe

References:

• 2024 Guide: https://www.reddit.com/r/Calibre/comments/1c2ryfz/comment/lhtaln2/
  • Good tips on completely uninstalling a previous version of K4PC if necessary and other information too
• Dealing with Kindle ebooks in Calibre from MobileRead forums: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=361503

Note: KFX Input is updated to v2.22.0 on 07 March 2025. It says: Fix bug that prevented metadata from being shown in Device view for books in KFX format on Kindles do not use MTP (pre-2024 models).