The Amazon Kindle is a fantastic e-book reader and, due to aggressive marketing, it is becoming extremely popular. One concern is whether e-books already downloaded on to a computer can be read on the Kindle.
The easiest way to get books and documents from other sources to your Kindle is to get a Send-to-Kindle email address. You can get this email address not only for your Kindle device but also for your Kindle reading apps, as well as your Kindle library in the Amazon Cloud after registration.
Go to www.amazon.in, sign in and click on the ‘Manage your content and devices’ link. On the next page, click on Settings. First, change your country to India. Then turn on ‘Device synchronisation’ and ‘Automatic book update’. When you scroll down you will get your Send-to-Kindle email settings in the form of username@kindle.com. Your Kindle will only receive files from email addresses you have authorised. Look for ‘Approved Personal Document Email list’ and add your email address here. Now you can send your documents to your Kindle device or app by simply attaching the file to an email addressed to your @kindle.com address. Get your Kindle library to accept your personal files by enabling Personal Document Archiving on this settings page.
Apart from its proprietary e-book format, .mobi and .azw, the Kindle supports .doc, .docx, .html, .rtf, .jpeg, gif, .png, .bmp, .txt and .pdf. When you are attaching a PDF file to the email you are sending to your Kindle address, write ‘convert’ in the subject line so that you can take advantage of the Kindle’s variable font sizes, annotations and Whispersync (an Amazon service that keeps a tab of where you left off on a page, whether it is in the audible version or an e-book).
Most e-books that you would have downloaded to your computer would be in the .epub format. The problem is the Kindle cannot read this. Therefore, you need to convert these books to a format that the Kindle can understand. For doing this there is a superb tool called Calibre. Calibre can convert any e-book into any format. It can change the cover among several other things. It is available from https://calibre-ebook.com/ download for free.
Once you open Calibre, at the top you will see ‘Add Books, Edit Metadata and Convert Books’. Click on ‘Add Books’. Then open the directory where your books are lodged. Next, ‘Edit Metadata’. Make sure that the name of the book and the author is correct and change the output format to .mobi. Then convert. Save it to the desktop or any other directory you create for this. The book will appear on the address bar. Connect your Kindle with the USB cable to your computer. Simply double click on the book in the .mobi format and it will be sent to the Kindle. You can do this with all the books you have converted.
Send in your computer-related problems to askdoss@abpmail.com with bits&bytes as the subject line
