You can now download ebooks again on the Amazon Kindle

Amazon experienced an outrage on their Kindle e-reader servers that lasted almost a week. This is a huge deal because it prevents people from downloading and accessing audiobooks and ebooks purchased from Amazon. This also included books purchased from Amazon in the past but were sitting in the cloud and not downloaded locally. Amazon has just solved the issue; books can be downloaded and read on the Kindle e-reader.

Another issue that has been successfully resolved is the bug with Overdrive Libby and patrons’ website subdomains for their local branches. The bug, which prevented users from checking out a book and delivering it wirelessly to the Kindle, has been fixed. Users no longer experience issues where Libby would not recognize a Kindle already attached to their account. The resolution of the ebook download problem has also fixed the Overdrive issues, providing reassurance of the system’s reliability.

Users worldwide experienced all of these outages on popular devices such as the Kindle, Kindle Paperwhite, and Kindle Oasis. The Kindle reading apps for Android and iOS were unaffected. This likely represents the most significant number of users who read ebooks and listen to audiobooks on their smartphones or tablets.

Amazon has been facing persistent challenges with its e-readers. The Send to Kindle system, for instance, has been non-functional for over a month now, and as of the publication of this article, it still remains down. This means users cannot use Send to Kindle for Android, iOS, Chrome Extension, or Email, effectively preventing the uploading of EPUB documents. It’s important for our users to be aware of these ongoing issues.

Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.