My Kindle is from 2012, it is a 5th generation Kindle Paperwhite, and it works perfectly. I don't need to buy a new one. Unfortunately, it is no longer supported by Amazon (it won't receive new updates). So if and when its hardware fails, I would like to have the option to buy whichever brand of ereader I like without feeling locked in the Kindle brand by my previous purchases from Amazon.

I first tried to remove the DRM from my Kindle purchases in 2013 and failed miserably. It felt too technical and quite hard.

Recently, Amazon announced that by February 26 it will no longer allow users to download their ebooks on their computers so they can transfer it to their kindle with a USB cable. Wifi will be the only method allowed to download the books directly from Amazon services.

This announcement alarmed lots of users, particularly those who own older unsupported units. What if Amazon disables wifi transfers for old models?

Thanks to Amazon's move, my interest in removing it from the books we purchased was rekindled (sorry) and I managed to DeDRM nearly all our Kindle books.

I used Calibre + the DeDRM plugin method.

The above method sounds intimidating but is pretty simple and boils down to the following:

1. Download and run Calibre (free/open source software for managing your ebooks library)
2. Download the DeDRM plugin to extend Calibre's functionality.
3. Enter your Kindle serial number in the setup of the plugin.

There are a little more details than the above steps, you can follow the instructions in the linked post.

If you use Debian:

Try to use the Calibre Flatpak or download the official binary from their website. The one packaged for debian bookworm is missing a python package that is an essential dependency for the DeDRM plugin.

I had to download each book manually but you can bulk download them using this script.