**Amazon Plans to Let You Download Your E-books Again - But There's a Catch**

For years, Amazon's Kindle store has been shrouded in controversy over its e-book licensing model. When you buy an e-book on Amazon, you don't actually own it - instead, you're granted a license to view the content at your leisure. And if Amazon decides to revoke that license for whatever reason, there's little you can do about it.

But in a small victory for consumers, Amazon has announced that it will allow users to download some e-books starting in 2026 - but only if a publisher gives its approval first. This change comes after years of criticism over the Kindle store's restrictive policies, which have been likened to renting an e-book rather than owning one.

According to Amazon's DRM (Digital Rights Management) support page, starting on January 20 next year, "verified purchasers can download the EPUB or PDF files of your confirmed DRM-free books." The catch: this only applies to books that are specifically marked as DRM-free by the publisher. If you're reading these e-books via a Kindle Unlimited subscription, you won't be able to download them at all.

This change was first spotted by Good e-Reader (via Android Police), which notes that Amazon has also closed a loophole that allowed users to download Kindle books and send them to other e-readers. The "Download & transfer via USB" feature, in combination with older e-book formats, allowed some users to hack the files and change their format to make them accessible on other devices.

While this move is a small step towards giving consumers more control over their e-books, it's worth noting that Amazon is still placing the onus on book publishers to decide whether users should be able to own their e-books. Starting early next year, users can download either EPUB or PDF via the Manage Your Content and Devices page on Amazon's website.

But what happens if a publisher changes its mind about making an e-book available for download? According to Amazon's new DRM rules, you'll still maintain control of that copy even if you can't download it anymore. This is a positive change for any lingering Kindle readers with big libraries - and may even be a win for smaller e-reader brands.

The only question now is which publishers will be willing to offer PDF access to their books. Given the publishing industry's history of aggressively defending its copyright interests, there may be few authors and publishers who are willing to enable free digital downloads. The Association of American Publishers (AAP), a trade group representing the big five major publishing houses, successfully sued the Internet Archive for copyright infringement last year - and it's unlikely that many publishers will want to follow suit.

Gizmodo reached out to several major publishing houses for comment on their plans for book downloads, but we'll have to wait and see if we hear back. For now, at least, Amazon is giving consumers a glimmer of hope that they may finally be able to feel some small sense of ownership over the e-books they buy.

**Update:** We'll update this post if we hear back from any major publishing houses about their plans for book downloads.