Old Digital Books

At the end of February, Amazon removed the ability to backup your Kindle books to your computer. To be completely honest, I had never backed up my books. I don’t own many Kindle books, and the ones I do are tracked in a spreadsheet with the receipt date listed. That isn’t really a backup plan, but I felt like I had a good sense of what was there and would know if one disappeared.

But my cousin was backing up her book, so suddenly, I wanted to back up my books. I scrolled down the list, clicking each one to back up to the computer until I started hitting books that I didn’t really care about. I mean, it’s one thing for me to decide to get rid of a physical book. That’s my choice. So I didn’t want the choice taken away from me by Kindle, but I also would never have kept these books if they were made of paper. They were part of a moment of time.

It’s funny that I’ve never looked at my physical bookshelves in the same way. I’ve gotten rid of physical books before because I didn’t need them anymore and wanted the space, but if I had infinite space (or, at the very least, more space than I have), I wouldn’t get rid of any of my books.

And here I was, willing to let go of some digital books.

In the end, I reopened my laptop and backed them up, too. I will probably never look at them again. I’m not sure I even needed to do the backup. But… the idea of not being able to do the backup or the choice being made for me felt wrong, too. They’re mine not to look at if I choose.