Context and Rationale
Since Donald Trump started threatening Canada with annexation and imposing tariffs against all Canadian goods entering the United States, I've been striving to replace all the American goods I regularly buy, preferably with Canadian alternatives. I have benefitted from the hard work of others who have sourced Canadian alternatives to American consumer goods, such as the excellent Made In Canada website. So in this post, I want to return the favour by sharing what little I know about replacing Amazon (a billionaire-owned American company) as the go-to ebook store for your Kindle e-reader.
About a year ago, I bought a Kindle Paperwhite (11th generation); a workhorse of Amazon e-readers. Amazon makes it easy to purchase ebooks, which are synced to all your Kindle e-reading devices through your Amazon account. But this convenience comes at the cost of being locked into Amazon's ecosystem for purchasing ebooks and other content for your Kindle device. Ebooks purchased from Amazon are are delivered to your Kindle using a proprietary format, such as AZW3, KF8, and KFX (all based on the MOBI format), but other popular ebook formats, like EPUB, are not compatible with Kindles. Until now, I've accepted this tradeoff between convience and compatibility. But given the emerging world order, where the United States is threatening a stupid and unnecessary trade war with Canada, backed by tech-bro oligarchs, like Jeff Bezos (owner of Amazon), times have changed. Now I need to find an alternive source for my ebooks that I can read on my Kindle reader so I can finally drop my Amazon account for good. Turns out, it can be done.
The Prerequisites
To make this work, you'll need some (free) software: Adobe Digital Editions (ADE), Calibre, and the DeDRM plugin for Calibre. After you've installed Calibre, install the DeDRM plugin (in Calibre, Preferences -> Advanced -> Plugins -> Load Plugin from File on macOS; it will be something similar on Linux or Windows. After unzipping DeDRM_tools_10.0.9.zip, install the plugin DeDRM_plugin.zip). If you're going to be purchasing books from Kobo, also install the Obok plugin (which ships with the DeDRM plugin; Obok_plugin.zip), which is useful for downloading books from Kobo into Calibre. Once installed, restart Calibre, and you're ready to go.
When you purchase an ebook, your digital rights to that ebook are stored in a Digital Rights Management (DRM) file. This is the difference between purchasing a physical book, which you own outright, and a digital book, for which you purchase limited, personal access to its content. Adobe Digital Editions allows you to view your digital rights to the ebook, in addition to other information (including the book's content). Calibre is an open source ebook management tool, which we will use to convert Kindle-incompatible file types (like EPUB) to a format that can be read on a Kindle (MOBI).
The General Process
The process is basically the same regardless of where you purchase or borrow your ebooks. You need to download a copy of the ebook and convert it into the MOBI format so it is compatible with your Kindle e-reader. For example, if you borrow an ebook from your local library, through, say, CloudLibrary, Libby, or Hoopla, download a copy of the ebook for offline reading. The file that you'll download will be an Adobe Content Server Message file, which will have an .acsm file extention. This file does not contain the actual content of your ebook, but rather it contains information about your access rights to the content. Open the .acsm file in ADE. When you do this for the first time, you will be prompted to authenticate with a password (usually your AdobeID; since I don't have an AdobeID, I just used my computer login password). Once authenticated, ADE will download the contents of your ebook to the ADE library. By right-clicking on the ebook in the main ADE library, you can locate the ebook (usually in EPUB format) on your hard drive.
Fig. 1: Screenshot of the Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) library after right-clicking on a file, showing how to find the downloaded file in the file directory (i.e., Show File in Finder). Notice that the book that was selected was borrowed from my local library, and it shows that my loan has 12 days remaining. This information comes directly from the .acsm file, which provides a record of my content-access rights to this work.
Open that file (the ebook file, typically in EPUB format) in Calibre (I just drag-and-drop). If you purchased your ebook from Kobo and you installed the Obok plugin (Obok = Kobo spelled backwards), you can simply click the Obok button in Calibre's toolbar (see Fig. 2 below) and you can select any book from your Kobo library (of course, that means you have to authorize Calibre to access your Kobo library), and the book will automatically be added to your Calibre library without having to go through the ADE step above. The goal is to get your ebook into Calibre's library so it can be converted to MOBI format, which is compatible with your Kindle. Therefore, if you acquire an ebook from any other source, like ebooks.com, this step is the same—download the ebook and import it into Calibre. If you download an .acsm file, open it in ADE (as above), then import the book file into Calibre.
In my setup, all I have to do is send the ebook to my Kindle device. Calibre is smart enough to recognize the input format (usually EPUB) and that I'm trying to send it to a Kindle device, and it offers to automatically convert the ebook to a compatible format. If, for whatever reason, it doesn't convert your file automatically, right-click the file in Calibre, and choose to convert the file manually. You will be presented with a screen that shows the input format (EPUB) in a drop-down button at the top-left of the screen, and an output format (choose MOBI) from a drop-down button at the top-right of the screen.
Fig. 2: Screenshot of the Calibre library, after importing the .epub. Although in my setup, this file would be converted automatically upon sending it directly to my Kindle e-reader, by right-clicking the file, you can convert the file to a compatible format manually. Notice the white Obok button at far right in the toolbar.
Fig. 3: This is the file-conversion screen in Calibre. The input format (EPUB) is shown in the top-left, and you can select the output format you require (MOBI for Kindle devices) in the top-right.
Send the converted file to your device (I use a wired USB connection, but it can be done wirelessly), and you're done. Happy reading.
Notes
- I've tested this process on an iMac running macOS Ventura 13.7.1, using ADE 4.5.12.85, and Calibre 7.24, using books I've purchased from Kobo and ebooks.com or legally borrowed from my local library using CloudLibrary. Everything else is a guess.
- I've included links to all the prerequisites required for this process to work. The links were functional at the time I published; you might have to go digging on your own if the links break.
- I'm no expert. This process worked for me, and I'm making it available in the genuine hope that it helps you. But, as always, YMMV.
- This is not an illegal process, as long as you're using it to read books you've legally acquired on your Kindle device. It becomes illegal when you make copies and share files stripped of their DRM protections.
- Buy your books, and support the authors that write them.
