Hah, they actually did a slight rollback! When I first heard about them stopping the downloads, I immediately downloaded all the books I purchased from Amazon and went from buying ~1 book per week to 0. Seems a lot of us doing so had some sort of effect.

Unfortunately, it seems like this will be chosen by the publisher, so of course probably most of the books won't be downloadable at all, and Amazon can now point their finger at the publisher instead of taking the blame themselves. Publishers was probably always the reason behind the move, but at least now Amazon have someone else to blame, which I guess is great for them.

I have bought more than 600 books over a decade or so;

But after they decided the ebooks were actually just license to read, I did exactly the same as you, and now rather than happily buying from them, actively discourage everyone in my social circle from using kindle.

I am not going back, whoever they decide to blame.

It’s pretty unusual for Amazon to put any other entity’s interest ahead of it’s own, so they can be presumed to have some business reason for it, like the number of people who’ve decided not to buy from them any more.