Amazon continues to crackdown on Kindle e-book sharing

Abstract

Amazon seems to be on a quest to shut loopholes and to tighten safety with regard to Kindle ebook-sharing.
Customers on Reddit are reporting a brand new e-mail from Amazon Kindle Assist, signaling the start of the tip for the Ship to Kindle through partial area perform.
This performance removing is predicted to take maintain starting April 1.

With regards to the Kindle ereader ecosystem, Amazon’s Send to Kindle utility has all the time been one of many extra helpful options obtainable to end-users. The software makes it simple to wirelessly ship paperwork and digital ebook recordsdata on to your Kindle, permitting you to reap the benefits of your E Ink display for a extra comfy studying expertise.

For higher or worse, it now seems that Amazon is cracking down on one traditionally obtainable Ship to Kindle loophole: the flexibility to make use of a partial e-mail tackle or a partial area to provoke the method. As reported by Good E-Reader, textual content recordsdata despatched from an unapproved or incomplete tackle will fail to be delivered beginning on April 1.

Bookworms on the unofficial r/Kindle subreddit shortly took notice of a brand new e-mail despatched out from Amazon Kindle Assist, by which the corporate seems to verify the coverage change in writing.

“To boost safety, Ship to Kindle will solely assist full e-mail addresses (e.g., “kindlecustomer@xyz.com”) and can not assist partial e-mail addresses or domain-only addresses (e.g., “@xyz.com”) after April 1, 2025. This variation helps make sure that solely senders from emails you particularly approve can ship paperwork to your Kindle,” reads the e-mail from Amazon Kindle Assist.

Whereas this variation is unlikely to have an effect on most on a regular basis shoppers, it does put a damper on issues within the training and enterprise scenes. Till now, some organizations have utilized domain-only e-mail addresses to push out Advance Reader Copy (ARC) recordsdata to many customers in a simultaneous capability.

This Ship to Kindle change will undoubtedly put ARC companies like BookFunnel in a trickier state of affairs going ahead. As one Reddit user points out, the change may also break sure third-party app features. Particularly, the favored Readwise service offers a Ship to Kindle function that depends on a @readwise.io partial area tackle to do its job.

Associated

One of Kindle’s most useful features was just discontinued for no real reason

Kindle customers on Reddit are reporting receiving a warning message from Amazon a few function going away quickly.

The corporate not too long ago deprecated the Obtain & Switch through USB possibility throughout its Kindle lineup

A person reading on a Kindle Paperwhite.

Amazon made headlines simply weeks in the past, when it confirmed the removal of Kindle’s ‘Obtain & Switch through USB’ possibility starting February 26. This specific change gutted the flexibility for customers to switch and backup their Kindle-purchased ebooks straight through a wired USB connection.

Since then, some Kindle customers have expressed their discontent with Amazon’s ever-tightening stance on e-book file transferring, digital rights administration (DRM) insurance policies, and ecosystem lock-in. Ownership in the digital age is a sensitive topic, and, sadly, books are simply as vulnerable to nebulous licensing phrases as digital films, TV exhibits, and video video games are.

Fortunately, for the foreseeable future, the Ship to Kindle function itself will proceed to function usually — as long as you present a full-length e-mail username, and keep away from utilizing a domain-only tackle.