Amazon is working on a new feature for the Kindle called remote license release. Some books allow only a limited number of simultaneous copies to exist on a customer’s devices. You will likely run into this problem if you own multiple Kindles, in addition to a Fire Tablet and the Kindle app for Android or iOS and have the same book downloaded on many different devices. Remote license release provides a mechanism to see which registered Kindle apps/devices currently have a specific copy of a book and provides a means to remotely delete a copy from another device to free up a download for this Kindle.
Code for this new system was found in the latest 5.13.5 update for modern Kindle e-readers. I think it is great that you will soon be able to delete books on multiple devices right on the Kindle, instead of having to visit the Amazon website, goto content and devices, and try and find the books you want to remove, clicking on the cover art and deselecting older devices, just so the book can be downloaded from the library screen on the Kindle you are using on a daily basis. These are so many hoops to jump through and Amazon doesn’t provide any clear tutorials on how to actually do this.
There is no estimated date when remote license will go live. Amazon often includes new features in firmware that activate at a later date.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
