The latest generation, Kindle Paperwhite, Kindle Scribe 2, Kindle Scribe 1, and Kindle and the upcoming Kindle Colorsoft, all have something in common. When you plug them into USB into your PC or MAC, they no longer appear as external drives. This prevents users from using file managers to back up their books or to sideload new books onto the Kindle. Amazon has also removed the download and transfer via USB option for purchased ebooks from the content page. This will likely prevent people from stripping the DRM from the books and sharing them on piracy websites.
This is not the first time Amazon has removed the ability to backup books. Last year, they made the process almost impossible on the new Kindle for PC and MAC. They also removed the ability to back up books borrowed from the Kindle Unlimited subscription service and Prime Reading. Audible continues to allow users to download audiobooks locally for offline listening. Purchased Kindle books can also be read without an internet connection.
Older Kindle e-readers, such as the 9th generation Kindle and older, continue to have the ability to plug them into your computer with the USB cable, and they will show up as drives. This allows users to sideload and back up their books. New Kindles, especially the 12th generation models and the new 11th generation Kindle, do not allow you to do this. This is because these new devices have a new file system called MTP.
Legacy Kindle e-readers were all about sideloading ebooks in the early days since the first Kindle came out in 2007. WIFI was less prevalent today, so users needed to load their books. Now, WIFI is everywhere, and there is no need to load your books when you can buy them from Amazon and have them synced across all of the other Kindle products, like the apps for Android or iOS. Users can continue to load their books with send by email, which seems to work since it’s done through an entirely different system.
Amazon is not the only company that has abandoned the ability to load books. Apple Books has never allowed you to do it, and ditto with almost every prominent manga, newspaper, and magazine platform. They all want you to stay in their walled garden. However, a few significant brands still appear as drives on a PC or MAC, such as Pocketbook and Kobo e-readers.
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.