De-DRMing My Amazon Kindle Library

After a few hours of trial and error, I finally managed to free my Kindle library. Here’s how it went down, step by step.

What You’ll Need #

1. A Kindle Paperwhite (Gen 11 or Older) This is crucial. Newer devices use a file format that the tools I used might not handle, but I didn’t test this directly.

2. Amazon Kindle Bulk Downloader (treetrum/amazon-kindle-bulk-downloader) A Node.js script that logs into your Amazon account and downloads all your purchased ebooks via “Über USB herunterladen”.

   • It selects the last device that interacted with your Amazon library. You’ll need the serial number of this device later to decrypt the DRM.
   • In my case, I had five devices listed, and the script chose the one connected to the Amazon store most recently.
   • For peace of mind, you might want to change your Amazon credentials afterward.

3. Calibre with the DeDRM Plugin (noDRM fork of DeDRM_tools)

   • Install the plugin in Calibre to remove DRM during the import process.
   • Make sure to use the serial number of the Kindle device that downloaded the books. If you’ve already imported books into Calibre, you’ll need to remove them and re-import after setting up the plugin.

4. Calibre for Library Management (Calibre Software)

   • Beyond DRM removal, Calibre is excellent for organizing your library. It lets you sort, edit metadata, convert file formats, and probably much more that I didn’t try yet.
   • Start small: import one book and open it in Calibre’s reader to confirm that the DRM removal worked. Alternatively, try converting the file — if it works, you’re good to go.

Lessons Learned #

There’s a lot of outdated advice out there about this process. Here’s what I learned through trial and (plenty of) error:

• At one point, I was stuck using Kindle for PC in Wine on Linux. That didn’t go well. The app started but I was never able to access the internet from it. Some people suggested that missing CA certificates were the issue, but I didn’t follow that path.
• I even set up a Windows VM to keep experimenting. Thankfully, I figured out the importance of using the correct serial number shortly after.
• The latest versions of all tools worked fine on Linux once I understood the process.

In the end I did all of this, just to try out Claudio’s recommendation about Kokoro (Convert E-books into audiobooks with Kokoro), which is a text-to-speech model (￣▽￣*)ゞ. Once I had a chance to play around with it, I might write about it some more.

One more thing 🏴‍☠️ #

With great power comes great responsibility.
— Benjamin Franklin “Ben” Parker a.k.a. Uncle Ben

Just because you can remove DRM doesn’t mean you should use it to distribute books freely. Stripping DRM is like ripping a CD — you’re making a backup or converting a file for personal use. But whether that’s legal depends on your country. In many places, sharing DRM-free copies is considered piracy and can have legal consequences.