How to Delete Books from Kindle

The Amazon Kindle may be a great way to carry hundreds of books at the same time, but no version of it has unlimited memory. This guide explains how to delete books from your Kindle in order to free up on-device storage space. It also explains how to delete books permanently from your Kindle account, just in case there's something from your literary past you'd rather forget.

How to Remove Books from Kindle

Here's how to delete a book from your Amazon Kindle. With your device turned on, you should take the following steps:

On the Home screen, press MY LIBRARY.
Press and hold your finger on the book you wish to delete. Alternatively, press the ⋮ button in the bottom-right corner of the book's cover.
Click Remove from Device. This will remove the book from your Kindle.
Repeat steps 1-3 for any other books you'd like to remove from your device.

How to Delete Books Permanently from Your Kindle Account

It's easy enough to remove books from Kindles, but erasing books permanently from your Amazon account is another matter. Without taking this latter step, books you've deleted from your Kindle will still appear on your device, under the "ALL" category of "MY LIBRARY." This lets you re-download any books you've wiped from your Kindle's memory, but it might be undesirable if you're sharing your device with someone else and don't want them to discover, say, your secret liking for romance novels.

To permanently delete a book from your account, simply take the steps below:

Type amazon.com into your browser address bar.
Hover the mouse cursor over the Account & Lists dropdown menu and click Your Content and Devices.
Check the square boxes on the far left-hand side of the books you wish to delete.
Click the Delete button at the top of the list of your Kindle books.
Click the Yes, Delete Permanently button that appears in the pop-up window. Click Cancel if you have second thoughts.

It's worth bearing in mind that once a book is permanently deleted there is, unsurprisingly enough, no way of retrieving it. It will have to be purchased for a second time if a user wishes to read it on their Kindle again.

However, if you haven't deleted the book from your Kindle before going to your Amazon account and deleting it via Manage Your Content and Devices, it will still be on the device afterwards.

To delete it permanently from your Kindle device (and not just your Kindle account), you have to go through steps 1-3 of the first section of this guide. The only difference is that, for step 3, the option you click is renamed as Delete This Book rather than Remove from Device. That's because it will be deleted permanently, since there's now no way of re-downloading it afterwards from your Kindle account.

How to Re-download Books to Your Amazon Kindle Library

That said, if you've deleted a book only on your Kindle, and not through your Amazon account, it still exists somewhere on Amazon's cloud. It's therefore possible to re-download it onto your device. This can be done either on your Kindle or through your Amazon account:

Switch on your Kindle. Make sure it's connected to Wi-Fi or 3G (if you have a cellular Kindle).
Click MY LIBRARY on the Home page.
Click the ALL button in the top-right corner.
Click the book you wish to re-download.

This process is something that can be done an indefinite number of times, enabling users to free up memory space when they don't need a particular book and then re-downloading it when they do. And for those who wish to re-download and manage their Kindle library books via their Amazon account, they can do the following:

Type amazon.com into your browser address bar.
Hover the mouse cursor over the Your Account dropdown menu and click the Manage Your Content and Devices option.
Click the Actions button on the right-hand side of the book you wish to re-download onto your Kindle.
Select the Deliver to [Customer's] Kindle option.