Today is the day Amazon is supposed to start offering Kindle ebooks for download in EPUB and PDF formats on DRM-free Kindle books that authors and publishers have chosen to offer in those formats.
So far I haven’t been able to find any books that have the option to download them at all. Have you found any? Tor is one publisher that’s known for selling DRM-free ebooks, but I checked several Tor books that I already own and none of them have the option to download PDF or EPUB files yet. Update: Now I’m getting the option to download; see the updates below.
It’s still early in the day so maybe Amazon just hasn’t enabled the new download option from their Content page yet. I checked Amazon’s KDP website and it still says January 20th is the day the new download options will go into effect, but so far I’m not seeing it.
This also highlights the issue of customers not knowing which ebooks will have this option and which won’t. If Amazon is going to do this they really need to add a new entry to the product details page for ebooks saying if they’re available to download in EPUB or PDF formats so customers know what they’re getting before buying.
A lot of Kindle ebooks have the following generic statement about being DRM-free, but that does not mean they’ll be available to download in EPUB/PDF formats: “At the Publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.”
Authors and publishers still have to enable the download option for each individual book, so even if a book is DRM-free it doesn’t mean it will automatically be available in EPUB and PDF formats.
It’ll be interesting to see if very many authors and publisher will choose to opt in on DRM-free downloads. One of the biggest problems with Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited is they force most authors into exclusivity agreements that means they can’t sell their ebooks anywhere else. This gives authors the option to allow EPUB downloads on purchased titles so people can read their ebooks on whichever devices and apps they choose, not just Kindles.
Will authors and publishers take advantage of this change, or will the fear of piracy keep them from enabling DRM-free downloads? Have you found any books that have the download option yet?
Update: Now I’m seeing the option to download additional formats on Tor books, but it doesn’t seem to be working properly. It downloads a ZIP file with a ridiculous name of like 50 random characters and numbers, and inside there’s no EPUB or PDF files to be found. One of the books I tested had 186 CSS style sheets and XHTML files, and 184 image files. I don’t know what we’re supposed to do with this, but it’s certainly not what I was expecting…
Update #2: So I tried changing the extension of the ZIP file to EPUB and sideloaded it onto my Kobo Libra Colour and it seems to be working, but the thumbnail image doesn’t align properly and the author metadata is blank so it shows as unknown author. I’m glad Amazon is doing this, but it looks like they’re putting as little effort as possible into to process, and the downloaded file is kind of a mess. Hopefully things will improve over time.
