If you pay for an e-book that has DRM (digital rights management) on it, you aren’t really buying it, no matter what the vendor says. At best, it’s a long-term lease which can be revoked at any time. Amazon has made this plain by removing the ability to download permanent copies of any and all e-books you may have “bought.” As of February 25, 2025, you will no longer be able to download your “purchases” to a device that isn’t directly under Amazon’s control.

If you care about keeping what you “own,” you need to download all your “purchases” before then. You have to do it one book at a time, which can get tedious if you’ve “bought” a lot of books.

Once I wrote a post (no longer online) commenting on Andy Ihnatko’s claim that Amazon was the perfect solution to book preservation because it will be around “forever.” This event shows that even if it endures as long as the human species, there’s no reason to believe it will support access forever to every book it has distributed. There will be a day when Kindles are no longer supported, and any books that are only on a Kindle will be gone. Some books may disappear sooner because of pressure by governments or for other reasons.

I still get nearly all my books printed on paper. When I get e-books, I try to make sure they don’t have DRM, and I asked Amazon not to put DRM on the books which I’ve made available through its site. Some books are available only in digital format, and imported books can have painful shipping costs, so I can’t always get paper. If you want to keep your e-books, avoid DRM and avoid Amazon.