How to Copy or Back up Kindle Books
For many people this title might seem senseless, “copy or back up” equals “copy and paste” for most of us. But when you buy books in Amazon Kindle store, things are not as simple as you think.
Why copy and back up Kindle books are not easy? Because of the DRM. Yes you can copy the DRMed book files to any folder you want, but that makes no sense.
For example, you copy and paste a Kindle book to your sister’s Kindle, she is not able to read the book because of the DRM. You copy and paste a Kindle book to computer for “Back up”, when you want to read the book months or years later, you may not be allowed, as you must verify your ownership and communicate with the content server, but once if the content server is down, this book cannot be read any longer. If can’t understand this, you can read the news about FictionWise’s shut down.
To make it simple, if we want to copy or back up Kindle books, we need to find the books in Kindle gadget or apps, and deDRM them.
Back up Kindle books from Kindle for Android App
1. Find the books. Connect Android phone/tablet to computer, open the “Removable Disk”, and go to this folder “/Android/data/com.amazon.kindle/files/“, all the books downloaded on Android are saved in this path. There are many temporary fragmental files mixed with the book files, however, you can sort the files by file size. In general, the temporary file is only 2-3KB and a book is at least 100KB.
2. DeDRM the books. For how to deDRM them, please read this post, I’ve covered it in details.
3. Copy the DRM-free eBook files to a folder on your computer, and please keep the folder safe.
Back up Kindle book from E-Ink Kindle
To back up books from E-Ink Kindle is simple.
1. At first also connect Kindle to computer with USB cable, then open the “Removable Disk” disk, all the books are saved in “documents” folder. The purchased books are always coming in .AZW3 format while some other sideloaded books may saved as MOBI/AZW file.
2. Make the books DRM-free, for detailed guide please refer a previous post on this blog.
3. Copy the DRM-free books to your back up folder.
Back up Kindle books from desktop (Kindle for PC/Mac)
If you have already installed Kindle for PC/Mac, you can easily back up the Kindle books.
1. For both Windows and Mac computer, the books synced via Kindle for PC/Mac are saved in the same path: “Documents/My Kindle Content”. They are always saved as .AZW format.
2. To make the Kindle for PC/Mac books is extremely easy, please also read this guide post to learn how to do it.
3. Now you can copy the books to anyone and he/she is able to read them freely, and you can also back these files to the folder you won’t delete.
