Removing DRM from Kindle, ePub and PDF ebooks

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I like to read all my books using my iPad mini so I buy all my books from various sources as ebooks but most places tend to add DRM to them and thus making it harder for me to use them on the device I want. Some go as far as requiring you to use their own App for reading but that’s not acceptable for me as I like having my books neatly organised in my iBooks. So to do that I need to remove the DRM from the files. Please note that in some countries removing DRM is illegal so know your local laws.

Calibre

I tried couple of different software to remove DRM from ebooks I had bought but Calibre to be the most consistent. It’s available to Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

  1. Calibre will be the tool that will do most of the heavy lifting for us. So first download and install it.
  2. You’ll need to add a DRM removing plugin into Calibre and that you can get from Apprentice Alf’s blog. For the impatient here’s a direct link to DeDRM Tools github releases.  You’ll need the tools_vX.X.X.zip
  3. Inside the tools_vX.X.X.zip there’s a DeDRM_calibre_plugin directory extract the DeDRM_plugin.zip from that directory
  4. Install the DeDRM_plugin.zip to Calibre by going to Preferences -> Change Calibre Behaviour, then under Advanced select Plugins, then select Load plugin from file and select the DeDRM_plugin.zip
  5. Restart Calibre.
  6. Now your Calibre is ready to strip DRM from every ebook you add to it. The imported ebooks are without DRM and you can add them to your favourite e-reader. The files you can find directly from Calibre by clicking on the file and then under the preview there’s Click to open link.

Adobe Digital Editions

If you’ve bought Adobe DRM protected ebooks you’ll Adobe Digital Editions to download them to your computer. Sometimes all you get is a .acsm file and Adobe Digital Editions downloads the actual ePub or PDF file when you open the .acsm file. You’ll first need to sign in with your Adobe ID. You can download Adobe Digital Editions from Adobe. When you’ve downloaded a book with ADE you can find it by right clicking on the book and select Show File in Finder. Then add that file to Calibre and no more DRM on that book.

Kindle App (works with version up to 1.17)

  1. Download Kindle App.
  2. Disable KFX support in Kindle by running this in terminal:

    sudo chmod -x /Applications/Kindle.app/Contents/MacOS/renderer-test

  3. Download the book inside Kindle app to your computer. 
  4. In Mac OS X you can find the Kindle books from Library/Containers/com.amazon.Kindle/Data/Library/Application Support/Kindle/My Kindle Content/ The book files might not have any meaningful name but they all end with extension .azw
  5. Drop the .azw files to Calibre and it will figure out what book it is.
  6. Once it’s loaded to Calibre you can select the book and click Convert books to convert the AZW3 format to ePub which most readers will support

Kindle physical device

This only works if you have a E-Ink Kindle device registered to your account.

  1. Go to your Manage Your Content and Devices.
  2. On the book select more actions -> Download and transfer via USB
  3. Drop the .azw file to Calibre
  4. Once it’s loaded to Calibre you can select the book and convert it to ePub

Happy reading! Please don’t pirate books using this method it’s just for your own convenience.