It is important to draw a distinction between "the Kindle" (the hardware device sold by Amazon) and the "Kindle Store" (Amazon's e-book sales platform). The Ki

It is important to draw a distinction between "the Kindle" (the hardware device sold by Amazon) and the "Kindle Store" (Amazon's e-book sales platform). The Kindle Store, yes, is all about the DRM. And it's the "platform" accessed by the Kindle app on assorted devices. However, if you're talking about the hardware device then it's entirely reasonable to ignore the DRM issue. You plug it into your computer and it mounts as a USB drive, onto which you can drop books in a variety of non-DRM'd formats (annoyingly not ePub). You can purchase said books from a variety of vendors who are happy to sell you non-DRM-encumbered products. Amazon obviously really wants you to use these two things together, and the Kindle (device) is well set up to work with the Kindle Store. But they're not forcing you to use only their DRM with the hardware you bought.