Amazon removed books from my Kindle

[innocenat]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I have many books not purchased from Amazon, to which I've added a mobi-asin. By this logic, Amazon should remove them from my Kindle, as they're not in my Kindle library or anywhere in my Amazon purchase records. They have not done so.

I did not say that.

I said that Amazon will remove books that have been refunded and returned Prime Reading/Kindle Unlimited books.

If you didn't do any of the above Amazon won't remove them. And it will be only once. Once Amazon removed them for the aforementioned reasons, sideloading the same book again (even the one still with DRM) will stay.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Amazon doesn't remove sideloaded books, no matter where purchased. If they did, there would have been a major hullabaloo years ago.

Amazon will delete books you have sideloaded via USB in some very specific cases. I just did this test that demonstrates one situation.

• Put Kindle into airplane mode.
• Borrow a book using Kindle Unlimited.
• Use Download & Transfer via USB on amazon.com to obtain a copy of the book.
• Return book to Kindle Unlimited using amazon.com.
• Side load the book to Kindle via USB.
• Open the book on the Kindle and verify it is readable.
• Take Kindle out of airplane mode.
• Wait a few seconds for Kindle to sync.
• Book disappears from library view. Connecting via USB shows that the sideloaded file was deleted.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by jhowell

Amazon will delete books you have sideloaded via USB in some very specific cases. I just did this test that demonstrates one situation.

• Put Kindle into airplane mode.
• Borrow a book using Kindle Unlimited.
• Use Download & Transfer via USB on amazon.com to obtain a copy of the book.
• Return book to Kindle Unlimited using amazon.com.
• Side load the book to Kindle via USB.
• Open the book on the Kindle and verify it is readable.
• Take Kindle out of airplane mode.
• Wait a few seconds for Kindle to sync.
• Book disappears from library view. Connecting via USB shows that the sideloaded file was deleted.

Interesting. What will happen if you download a KU book via the PC app, remove the DRM and sideload to your Kindle? And then return the book. Will it stay on the Kindle, as you never officially downloaded a copy there?

Not that I recommend this course of action to anyone, I'm just curious. KU is not available in my country, so I can't test this myself.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by jhowell

Amazon will delete books you have sideloaded via USB in some very specific cases. I just did this test that demonstrates one situation.

• Put Kindle into airplane mode.
• Borrow a book using Kindle Unlimited.
• Use Download & Transfer via USB on amazon.com to obtain a copy of the book.
• Return book to Kindle Unlimited using amazon.com.
• Side load the book to Kindle via USB.
• Open the book on the Kindle and verify it is readable.
• Take Kindle out of airplane mode.
• Wait a few seconds for Kindle to sync.
• Book disappears from library view. Connecting via USB shows that the sideloaded file was deleted.

It would be interesting to expand on this test. Add a step in the middle where you RENAME the book before turning off airplane mode in the end. If it still gets deleted then it's something inside the file. Next, run the book through Calibre and strip the DRM before side loading it onto the Kindle. Does it still get deleted? Next up would be to strip the DRM and have Calibre convert it from AZW3 to a second copy of AZW3. If you side load the second copy, does it get deleted? Next, repeat this Calibre conversion, but convert from AZW3 to EPUB as an intermediary, then from EPUB to a second AZW3 copy.

If we find out that Amazon is triggering on the filename for deletion, it would be interesting to see if instead of putting the actual downloaded file on the Paperwhite as bait, you put a totally different eBook on there that has been renamed to match the original file. Will Amazon blindly delete any file with the same name as the one you downloaded? This might be a problem if you downloaded a book named, say, "Redemption". There must be a bazillion books with this same name. Would Amazon claim ownership of one of those and delete it simply because it has the same file name?

It would be interesting to find out just what Amazon is looking for to trigger on when they delete a book. This would be handy information to tuck away in the back of your brain in case Amazon starts going rogue (like they are doing in China - shutting down there). I won't be trying this myself because my Paperwhite is permanently in Airplane Mode. I don't plan on ever taking it out of this mode. Mostly because I don't want to have some software update forced upon it that I may not like, since you can't rollback firmware.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by haertig

Spoiler:

It would be interesting to expand on this test. Add a step in the middle where you RENAME the book before turning off airplane mode in the end. If it still gets deleted then it's something inside the file. Next, run the book through Calibre and strip the DRM before side loading it onto the Kindle. Does it still get deleted? Next up would be to strip the DRM and have Calibre convert it from AZW3 to a second copy of AZW3. If you side load the second copy, does it get deleted? Next, repeat this Calibre conversion, but convert from AZW3 to EPUB as an intermediary, then from EPUB to a second AZW3 copy.

If we find out that Amazon is triggering on the filename for deletion, it would be interesting to see if instead of putting the actual downloaded file on the Paperwhite as bait, you put a totally different eBook on there that has been renamed to match the original file. Will Amazon blindly delete any file with the same name as the one you downloaded? This might be a problem if you downloaded a book named, say, "Redemption". There must be a bazillion books with this same name. Would Amazon claim ownership of one of those and delete it simply because it has the same file name?

It would be interesting to find out just what Amazon is looking for to trigger on when they delete a book. This would be handy information to tuck away in the back of your brain in case Amazon starts going rogue (like they are doing in China - shutting down there). I won't be trying this myself because my Paperwhite is permanently in Airplane Mode. I don't plan on ever taking it out of this mode. Mostly because I don't want to have some software update forced upon it that I may not like, since you can't rollback firmware.

I'm pretty sure it isn't the name. Probably the asin or something inside the file. Or several of those put together.

[Argon]

You all might not believe this, but I just plugged my Kindle in and Amazon did indeed delete everything I'd sideloaded, verified with both the drive directory on Windows and Calibre.

[Argon]

Hopefully it was just a fluke with the new software update: after re-sideloading my books and syncing over Wi-Fi, nothing was deleted.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by haertig

It would be interesting to expand on this test. Add a step in the middle where you RENAME the book before turning off airplane mode in the end. If it still gets deleted then it's something inside the file.

I did this test and the book was still deleted even though it had a totally different name. So it is the content of the file that is important.

I am not interested in pursuing this further and so will leave additional tests for others.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I did this test and the book was still deleted even though it had a totally different name. So it is the content of the file that is important.

I am not interested in pursuing this further and so will leave additional tests for others.

Thanks for running that test. This is not an issue for me since I am 100% in Airplane Mode on my Kindle and use Calibre as my local book storage, not the Kindle itself. It was more of an "Inquiring Minds Want To Know!" thing. I figured Amazon couldn't be so stupid as to delete based on filename alone.

[acprinter]

I am sorry that the disappearing books have happened to other people, but at least I know I am not alone.

I have not had books disappear again because I now keep my kindle in airplane mode always and use download and transfer by usb.

[Badcatalex]

I have personally never had a single Kindle book disappear on me, sideloaded or otherwise.

Not on my KOA3, or my PW3, or my K4B, or even my K1!
I think it's just bad luck more than anything.

Or he did the KU/Prime Unlimited thing that other peeps have said.

[jmstruwe]

I experienced the loss of a large number of books from my 10th generation Kindle - all purchased and downloaded from my Amazon account directly to my Oasis - at about the time this thread began. They were definitely removed by Amazon.

I have a very large Amazon library. At the time of the incident it numbered approximately 21,000 volumes with purchase dates going back to 2012. I had downloaded nearly all of them to my Oasis. While all of my books have been purchased, most of them cost $0.00. Long story short, while downloading and organizing books on my Oasis I noticed that I had recently purchased a new copy of a book I had purchased a few years earlier. I selected the "Delete permanently" option for the older file. A few moments later books began vanishing from my Kindle. In the end over 14,000 books were removed from my device. Amazon Support was less than helpful and said I must have hit "Delete permanently" instead of "Remove download" on each of these books individually.

Sometime in 2020 or 2021 Amazon copied everyone's Kindle libraries from wherever they exist on the account to "the cloud" and now when you access your library from the device I believe it communicates exclusively with the cloud copy. When I told my Kindle to permanently delete a book purchased a few years earlier it did, but it also deleted the references to all volumes purchased prior to that volume from the cloud copy of my library. They are still in my Amazon account library and I can access them online and send them to my devices. Reading progress on these books will sync between devices but when I assign collections on the device I receive a message that the file was uploaded from a computer and the changes will not sync with the library.

According to the support rep, most Kindle users have a library of maybe a dozen volumes and they permanently delete each book after reading it. If that is the case, I doubt the developers did testing on a large library with a decade's worth of purchases, so the removal of all purchases dated up to and including the item specified for permanent deletion went unnoticed. Unfortunately there was nobody to tell.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by jmstruwe

Spoiler:

I experienced the loss of a large number of books from my 10th generation Kindle - all purchased and downloaded from my Amazon account directly to my Oasis - at about the time this thread began. They were definitely removed by Amazon.

I have a very large Amazon library. At the time of the incident it numbered approximately 21,000 volumes with purchase dates going back to 2012. I had downloaded nearly all of them to my Oasis. While all of my books have been purchased, most of them cost $0.00. Long story short, while downloading and organizing books on my Oasis I noticed that I had recently purchased a new copy of a book I had purchased a few years earlier. I selected the "Delete permanently" option for the older file. A few moments later books began vanishing from my Kindle. In the end over 14,000 books were removed from my device. Amazon Support was less than helpful and said I must have hit "Delete permanently" instead of "Remove download" on each of these books individually.

Sometime in 2020 or 2021 Amazon copied everyone's Kindle libraries from wherever they exist on the account to "the cloud" and now when you access your library from the device I believe it communicates exclusively with the cloud copy. When I told my Kindle to permanently delete a book purchased a few years earlier it did, but it also deleted the references to all volumes purchased prior to that volume from the cloud copy of my library. They are still in my Amazon account library and I can access them online and send them to my devices. Reading progress on these books will sync between devices but when I assign collections on the device I receive a message that the file was uploaded from a computer and the changes will not sync with the library.

According to the support rep, most Kindle users have a library of maybe a dozen volumes and they permanently delete each book after reading it. If that is the case, I doubt the developers did testing on a large library with a decade's worth of purchases, so the removal of all purchases dated up to and including the item specified for permanent deletion went unnoticed. Unfortunately there was nobody to tell.

Again, never rely on someone else to keep and manage your library, least of all the store where you purchased them. Download your books, remove the DRM and make your own back-ups. That's the only way to be certain your books won't disappear someday.

Of course, that's assuming you're interested in backing up your books at all. Not everyone is.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by jmstruwe

According to the support rep, most Kindle users have a library of maybe a dozen volumes and they permanently delete each book after reading it.

Either this response was scripted or the CS was making it up on the spot, but I find it highly dubious. I could make guesses about how long most Kindle users have been buying and reading Kindle books and the size of their libraries, but what seems obvious to me is that users with "maybe a dozen volumes" don't bother to delete their books permanently after reading them -- even if it's as many as a dozen books per year. Why bother? It's one thing to delete books to keep a library of several hundreds or more manageable, but maybe 100 books altogether over time? I cannot imagine that virtually all don't do more than delete the download from their device or app.

However, unfortunately, as you acknowledge, a user with tens of thousands of purchases and all of them also downloaded to a device is obviously not only an outlier, but an outlier of the outlying. Whatever happened, your use profile broke the system.

[Sirtel]

Just from curiosity, is there a reason to keep all those tens of thousands on your Kindle? If you do it for back-up, that's useless. Kindle books are coded for the device they're downloaded to and you can never use those copies on any other device. For backing up the books must be downloaded from your Kindle account to your computer and the DRM removed.

I too like to keep a couple of thousand books on my ereaders. But not much more than that, or they'll become unmanageable. The rest are kept on my computer.