This guide will help you remove the DRM protections on any Kindle books you’ve purchased from a Windows machine. What is a DRM protection ? In simple term, DRM stands for Digital Rights Management, which effectively acts as a lock on any digital purchases you’ve made online. An example of this is the Kindle eBook from Amazon. If you bought any eBook from either Amazon or Books & Noble you are likely to have a DRM protected eBook. This means you cannot share the book to others; the key to unlock the book is your Amazon account. This puts any eBook into a disadvantage in terms of book sharing. So if you’d like to share your eBook with others, you first need to remove the DRM protection, or simply sharing the Amazon account would do. But if your goal is to allow multiple people to read the content, then removing the DRM protection is the best option.
We are going to show you two methods on how to remove DRM from these protected eBooks.
First – Remove DRM protection via Calibre’s Apprentice Alf’s Plugin
This first method will leverage an open source eBook Reader, Calibre with DRM removal plugin from Apprentice Alf.
You need to download:
- Calibre eBook Manager
- Apprentice Alf’s DRM plugin for Calibre
First launch Calibre > Find the Preferences
Under Advanced section of Preferences go to Plugins
This will bring up a list of existing Plugins, go find “Load plugin from file” to install DRM removal plugin for Calibre.
Now navigate to the directory where you previously downloaded the tools_v6.1.x. Make sure to unzip the zip. Inside there should be a folder called DeDRM_calibre_plugin. Inside this folder there is a zip called “DeDRM_plugin”. Select the following zip to install as Calibre’s plugin.
This will prompt you a security risk warning; click Yes to proceed.
Once you’ve installed the plugin, you are half way to the finish line !
Now all you need is to import the Kindle book into the Calibre. If you don’t have Kindle for PC installed, please go ahead and download the application right now. Once you have finished installing the app, and logged in to your Amazon account, navigate to
Documents > My Kindle Content you will find some of the books that start with B00XXXX_EBOK.azw4 or .azw formats; those are the DRM protected books from your Kindle purchase.
Now go back to Calibre > Add books > Add books from a single directory. Make sure to select the book from your previous My Kindle Content directory. Once the book has imported, it will automatically remove any DRM protections from them.
Second – Remove DRM with pure Apprentice Alf’s DRM removal tool
This method will achieve the same result as the first method, but it requires different steps and setup.
Make sure you have the following tools ready on your Windows
You can now navigate to where you have downloaded the DRM removal tool [PATH_TO]\tools_v6.1.0\DeDRM_Windows_Application. Create a short-cut of DeDRM_Drop_Target.bat to desktop.
Now all you need to do is to drag and drop the book onto the bat file as shown below.
This will bring up the DeDRM dialog with a detailed configuration setting. You can leave everything as it is and proceed by clicking “Process eBook”.
Based on how large the book is, it’s going to take sometime to remove the DRM. Once it’s finished you should see a different file with readable title on your desktop.
This is it, a complete How-To guide on removing DRM protections on Kindle books. Use this wisely and leave a comment if there is any question.