…is not easy. But it’s possible. At least, at the time of writing, and the handful of ebooks I tried so far. There are many such guides online, often incomplete. Or more accurately, out of date, because Amazon subsequently added more stumbling blocks. I shall document what worked for me, a combination of steps from various guides. Some steps may be redundant!
This guide is for performing the process on Windows PCs. My goal was to get EPUBs I can read on my Kobo device.
Software to install (version numbers are what I have. Not saying these exact version are what’s required, but it might help):
Kindle Reader (I have the latest, version 1.30.0. Some guides say you need an earlier version, but nah, this is fine)
Adobe Digital Editions (4.5) - actually I’m not sure if this is required. It’s supposed to help the DeDRM plugin do its thing. But I haven’t signed into it with my Amazon account, so how does have the necessary keys with which to do the decryption? I don’t know if it’s doing anything as part of this ritual)
Install all of the above
Open the Kindle Reader application, be signed in
Open the Registry Editor
Go to this location in RegEdit: Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Amazon\Kindle\User Settings
Edit this key: isKRFDRendererSupported - change the value from true to false
(For MacOS and and perhaps Linux, the equivalent of this RegEdit stuff is documented here)
In the Kindle program, download your book (Already downloaded it? Delete it. Download it again.)
Find the location of the downloaded file. By default it’s in My Documents/My Kindle Content
The subfolder will be unhelpfully named something like B00BUJ2RAG_EBOK
There should be on .azw file in there. Import it into Calibre - drag it onto the main window. This copies the file into your Calibre library folder
In Calibre: select and convert the book. Right click on it> Convert books > Convert individually
In this new window, ensure the top-right corner shows EPUB as the selected format. Click OK.
The .epub file is now there in your Calibre library.
