M.A. Nichols

Electronics are wonderful things if you understand how to use them. Otherwise, they're just very fancy, very expensive paperweights. I've written about how great Kindles are for readers, but there are probably some of you out there who don't know how to get your ebooks into your Kindle. You could dig through the Amazon website to try and find the answer, but I thought I'd put together an easy-to-use guide for you instead. I use a Kindle, so this information is really only helpful to Kindle users.

 

Uploading eBooks

Most people simply buy their ebooks through the normal channels (like purchasing directly from Amazon), but what about if you download a book from Project Gutenberg or some other site that provides copyright-free copies of ebooks?

 

Easy.

 

There's the manual way, which includes plugging your Kindle directly into your computer and transferring it, but there's a super easy, super fast way to do it.

 

Simply email it to your Kindle account. The address is your login name for Amazon (minus the email) and then add @kindle.com. For example, if your login name to Amazon is JohnDoe@gmail.com, then you'd email it to JohnDoe@kindle.com. Within 10 minutes or so, they'll appear on your Kindle, ready to read.

 

Some things to keep in mind:

• Amazon will only allow you to email 20 books at a time. If you try more than that, they'll bounce you back an error email.

• The books need to be in the .epub format. If you have some other format, you'll need to convert it. The easiest way to do that is to use an online converting website, like ePubConverter.com.

• Whatever you're emailing will need to be under 20-25 megabytes, because most email programs won't let you email anything larger than that.

• When your ebooks arrive on your Kindle, they won't be on the "Books" tab. Only books purchased through Amazon will be available on that tab. Anything you upload to your Kindle will be on the "Docs" tab. Most Kindles and Kindle apps will allow you to put them in Collections just like your books, so it's not an issue.

• Amazon won't allow just anyone to email documents to your Kindle, so the email you send it from must be attached to the account that is authorized on your Kindle. If you need to attach additional emails to your account, do the following: ​Access your "Content and Devises" page in your Amazon; it is located by scrolling to the bottom of any Amazon webpage and clicking on it under the "Let Us Help You" section of the footer. Then click on the "Preferences" tab (between "Devices" and "Alexa Privacy", scroll down and click on "Personal Document Settings". Under "Approved Personal Document E-mail List" click "Add a new approved e-mail address". Enter the address you want to send the ebooks from and click "Add Address"

 

There are times when you'll get an error email telling you that a certain book wasn't compatible. If that happens, try downloading a new file and resending it or reconverting the file. Sometimes there's just a glitch, and you'll need to try again.

 

Hope that helps.