Amazon he says he will allow authors to offer their DRM-free e-books in EPUB and PDF formats through the self-publishing platform, Kindle Direct Publishing. Starting January 20, 2026, authors who designate their titles as DRM-free will see their books available in these more open formats.
The decision to use Digital Rights Management (DRM), a copyright protection mechanism, is set by authors when they publish their e-books on the Amazon platform.
The company notes that these changes will not affect previously published titles. If authors want to change the status of older titles, they must log in to the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) author portal and change an option in the settings. (Instructions on how to make this change are available Amazon KDP support site.)
This move may actually incentivize authors to apply DRM to their e-books.
As a writer on the KDP community forumsLeslie Anne Perry noted, “Previously, I didn’t enable DRM on my e-books. I thought I wanted people to be able to download them to other devices in their household. However, I think I’ll enable it on any future e-books. I’m not sure I want people to be able to download them as PDFs [sic].”
Another member pushed back against the complaints, arguing that it doesn’t really increase privacy, since those who wanted to could always dump their existing DRM-free Kindle file into software to convert it to EPUB or PDF.
Amazon is pitching the new feature as “easier” for readers to enjoy content they’ve already purchased, but the reality is that authors will have to choose whether they want to open access to their older works. To remove DRM, authors should click a box that says, “I understand that by not applying DRM, customers who purchase and have already purchased this book will be able to download it as a PDF or EPUB file.”
Elsewhere, Amazon has been making it harder for Kindle owners to share or back up their e-books through increased use of DRM in recent months.
With an update to Kindle software for 11th and 12th generation devices, the retailer introduced a new DRM system This made it impossible for Kindle users to back up their eBooks without jailbreaking their device. This was followed by one previous change to remove the USB download and transfer options, which angered many Kindle owners.
After an author updates the DRM status of their e-books, Amazon says the changes will take up to 72 hours to appear live on Amazon.com.
