E-books onto Kindle

The Amazon Kindle is a little different because the Kindle can’t read e-books in the industry-standard ePub format. The e-book file you receive has to be converted to a different format before it can be read. Amazon provide a service which does this.

Simplest: using “Send to Kindle”

Amazon have a service called “Send to Kindle”. It takes an e-book file in the standard ePub format, converts it to the format the Kindle uses, and sends it wirelessly to your Kindle.

As a bonus, it puts the e-book into your Kindle library, so if you have more than one Kindle, they will all be able to read the book.

Windows

Here are the instructions. You may find that you need to drag your received e-book file out of the email onto your desktop before you can right-click on it. If so, you can delete that file after the “Send to Kindle” process is complete.

Mac

Web

Here are the instructions. They involve dragging your received file into a web page. Usually you don’t need to go through the desktop first.

iPhone/iPad

Here are the instructions. From within an email, you need to long-press on the picture of the attached file in the message, and then choose “Share” from the menu which pops up.

Android

Here are the instructions. You may need to save the file before trying to share it with the Kindle app.

If your e-book doesn’t arrive, or Amazon report strange errors to you, the e-book may be too big for Amazon to cope with. In that case, here are some more advanced options for you to use.

Please note that the e-books you create are for your private use only and must not be given or distributed to other people.