Richard Holliday – Author

As an independent author, I publish all of my books through Amazon’s KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) platform. Whether you like it or not, Amazon remains one of the biggest and most ubiquitous marketplaces in the world, and is one that readers already trust when it comes online purchases. Many readers already have an Amazon account and this makes it very easy for them to purchase books, and KDP is generally very easy to use as an author.

Recently, Amazon sent an email to KDP users, “New eBook Download Options for Readers Coming in 2026”. The key part of the email is as follows:

Starting January 20, 2026, Amazon will make it easier for readers to enjoy content they have purchased from the Kindle store across a wider range of devices and applications by allowing new titles published without Digital Rights Management (DRM) to be downloaded in EPUB and PDF format.

If you take no action, the DRM-status of your previously published titles will not change but the EPUB and PDF downloads will not be enabled for existing DRM-free titles. If you want to allow reader downloads for these titles, follow the directions below on or after December 9, and select the option not to apply DRM.

In some author communities I am a part of, the immediate response to this decision has been suspicion. There’s concern that, if readers can download EPUB or PDF files and use them outside of Amazon’s walled-garden Kindle ecosystem, this will lead to an increase in eBook piracy.

Given Amazon’s history, this isn’t a completely irrational fear. Amazon has been known in the past to punish authors when their books crop up on piracy sites, even when this is completely outside of the author’s control. Worse still, Kindle Unlimited’s exclusivity requirement means that a pirated book technically violates the terms of service, an interpretation of the rules that is both absurd and blinkered in equal measure.

I also suspect that this sceptical reaction isn’t solely driven by practical concerns about piracy. There’s a broader sense of anti-Amazon sentiment at play. For some authors, Amazon can do nothing right and is an evil empire to be feared and resisted against, and any change, regardless of whether it benefits readers, or authors, is treated with automatic hostility.

This emotional reaction is understandable, and the instinctive fear has some merit. Amazon is a massive company that does have a history of frustrating decisions for authors, but disliking Amazon doesn’t make every decision they make a bad one.

My personal belief is that this change is not something authors should be worried about at all.

Pirates are going to pirate regardless, and DRM has never stopped that. Anyone determined enough can quite easily strip Amazon’s DRM from their eBooks with tools that are readily available for free and have existed for years. Book piracy isn’t new, and this change isn’t going to open the floodgates. The risk exists whether DRM is there or not.

Authors deserve to be paid for their work. There was some recent chatter from a reader group on X (Twitter) openly condoning piracy if someone “can’t afford books”. That argument is outside the scope of this post, but it doesn’t change reality: piracy happens. It’s a percentage of unavoidable wastage once your work enters the public sphere, and the people most likely to exploit the system were probably never going to pay in the first place.

However, I do feel that Amazon’s decision here is clearly pro-consumer.

If someone buys an eBook, they should be able to store it how they like and read it on whatever device they prefer. That’s how physical books work. You don’t get told that you can only read your paperback book that you buy from Amazon standing on one leg under one particular lamp during specific set hours.

Remember when Amazon, without any irony, remote-wiped copies of George Orwell’s 1984 from people’s Kindles? That incident alone should make anyone wary of overly restrictive digital “ownership”, where you own just a licence, not the product that can be revoked without warning. (I am aware of the deeper context – that Amazon were selling copies they had no right to be selling, but the optics were poor regardless.)

(A more modern example can be the constant shuffling and removal of films and TV shows on various streaming services, reminding consumers that access is often temporary, regardless of what you pay.)

A growing number of independent authors already sell (usually DRM-free) eBooks from their own website. Are those books also “at risk of being pirated”? Yes. However, most authors accept this trade-off because treating your readers – your customers – as if they’re going to shoplift by default risks alienating consumers entirely.

You can legally make backup copies of physical media such as CDs and DVDs for personal use, so why shouldn’t readers be allowed to manage their digital libraries in a similar way? I’d be happy to see physical books come with eBook downloads in a single package or purchase – the reader is buying the book; the format could be secondary.

Amazon’s new feature is also completely optional and opt-in.

I will be enabling this download option for all of my current and future books.

As authors, we need to stop seeing readers as the enemy, or default to questioning their motives. The vast majority of book lovers are honest, kind people who simply want to read in a way that’s most convenient to them on whatever device they have or choose to use. Giving readers more freedom – treating eBooks more like physical books – is long overdue, and in this case, I feel Amazon deserves credit for a genuinely pro-consumer move.

This option should’ve existed years ago. Anything that decentralises control, respects reader ownership of digital media and removes unnecessary barriers between the author and audience is a win.