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How to send books to your Kindle — even if they’re not from Amazon

How to send books to your Kindle — even if they’re not from Amazon

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Whether you use a Kindle device or an app, you can use Send to Kindle to easily add outside documents to your library.

By Barbara Krasnoff, a reviews editor who manages how-tos. She’s worked as an editor and writer for almost 40 years. Previously, she was a senior reviews editor for Computerworld.

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Kindle with illustrated background
Illustration by Will Joel / The Verge

Amazon’s Kindle is a useful reading tool, especially if you tend to purchase your books through Amazon. If you have ebooks that you’ve purchased elsewhere, however — or have picked up off a free service such as Project Gutenberg — you need to be able to put it on your Kindle (or Kindle app).

Getting a non-Amazon book onto a Kindle used to be a somewhat awkward process, involving attaching it to an email and sending it to your individual Kindle email address. However, Amazon’s Send to Kindle service has improved vastly since then, and it is now a fairly simple process.

Related

But first, a note: if you’re a long-term Kindle user who hasn’t been paying attention to the news, you may be surprised to see ePub listed — and not Mobi. Amazon added ePub to its list of allowed Kindle formats about a year ago and, around that same time, announced that it was retiring its long-used Mobi format. But while, according to the company, you can no longer send new Mobi documents to your Kindle, existing documents will not be affected.

Okay, here we go:

  • On the web, go to Amazon’s Send to Kindle page.
  • Drag and drop your file to the large square area, or click on Select files from device and choose the file you want to send. (The maximum file size is 200MB.) There will be a list of supported file types on the page — including PDF, DOCX, and ePub, among others. (Incidentally, you may note, there’s a list of Other ways to send on the right side of the page. We’ll get to that later.)
Web page headed File Upload with a gray box labeled Drag and drop files here, a yellow button below that labeled Select files from device, a list of file types below that. On the right, a subhead Other ways to send with several buttons labeled, Web, iOS, Android, etc.
Amazon has made its Send to Kindle page a lot easier to navigate.
  • The name of the file will now appear under the subhead Ready to Send.
File Upload page with gray box labeled Ready To Send, a file labeled “Jewish Futures - Michael A Burstein, editor.epub and to the right 445.6KB, below that, a toggle labeled Add to your Library, and then a Send button. The same buttons headed Other ways to send on the right.
Once you’ve selected your file, you’ll see a box labeled Ready to Send.
  • At this point, you can add more files (by clicking on the appropriate link). There is also a toggle called Add to your library that, when enabled, allows you to download the file to any device linked to your account.
  • If you prefer to just save the file locally, you can use the toggle to disable Add to your library. At that point, you’ll get a list of all your registered Kindle devices (or devices with Kindle apps), and you can specify one or more to send the file to.
Ready to Send box with Jewish Futures book below, the Add to your library labeled toggle below, with the toggle off, and below that Choose where to send your file(s): with four devices listed, and a Send button.
If you don’t want to send the document to your online library, you can send it directly to a device.
  • Either way, select Send, and your document will be sent either to your Amazon library or to the device(s) you’ve specified. A list of recently sent files will appear beneath the File Upload box.
Web page headed File Upload with a gray box labeled Drag and drop files here, a yellow button below that labeled Select files from device, a list of file types below that. Below the box, a list of Recently sent files. On the right, a subhead Other ways to send with several buttons labeled, Web, iOS, Android, etc.
Once you’ve successfully sent your document, it will appear on a list of recently sent files.

And you’re done! When I tried it, it took under a minute for the book to appear in my Android Kindle app. While this could vary, you shouldn’t have to wait long.

Alternative methods

As previously noted, you don’t have to use the online app to send your document to your Kindle — on the right side of the page are various buttons that, when clicked, will offer instructions on how to send documents to your Kindle account via a mobile app, email, or various other methods.

Sending via email offers an extra added attraction: if you don’t want to struggle with trying to read a PDF on your phone (which, depending on the file, can be a real headache), you can use email to convert the PDF to a more readable format on your Kindle app. We’ve got instructions on how to do that here.

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