On: Backing Up My Kindle Ebooks (2018)

[anatoly]

1. Download your own AAX files (using the Audible download manager or search around for some ways to do it w/o the download manager). 2. Find out your 'activation keys' using ffprobe and the inAudible-NG project, see instructions here: https://github.com/inAudible-NG/tables/blob/master/README.md. Needs to be done only once for your Audible account. 3. Use ffmpeg with --activation_bytes to convert AAX to MP3 or other formats, either directly or with a nice script like this one that'll divide into chapters: https://github.com/KrumpetPirate/AAXtoMP3

OpenAudible looks like a nice tool that'll automate all of these steps for you.

[Wowfunhappy → anatoly]

Why is transcoding necessary even if the AAC option is used? (I was under the impression that audible used aac under the hood.) Is this avoidable?

[anatoly → Wowfunhappy]

I'm not sure. Possibly if you try ffmpeg's -a copy and such, it'll simply extract the AAC. Let me know if it works for you. I've always wanted mp3 in the past so I didn't mind the transcoding.

[MrMember → anatoly]

I recently used AAXtoMP3 to back up my Audible library. It worked quite well.