(Credit: Amazon)
The Amazon Kindle is a great ebook reader, but it's tightly tied to Amazon's ecosystem. If you have a Fire tablet or a smartphone, you can download other e-reading apps to beef up your library, but with the Kindle hardware, you're pretty much tied to getting your content directly from Amazon. Well, sort of. Using a bit of free software, you can take ebooks in a variety of formats and zap them over to your Kindle. Here's how to do it.
PCMag-Recommended Amazon Kindles
Upload Via 'Send to Kindle'
Amazon offers a Send to Kindle page where you can upload ebook files saved on your device. On amazon.com/sendtokindle, click Select files from device and select the book you want on your Kindle. This tool supports PDF, DOC, DOCX, TXT, RTF, HTM, HTML, PNG, GIF, JPG, JPEG, BMP, and EPUB formats on ebooks up to 200MB in size. (Amazon no longer supports sending new Mobi files.) A status bar will appear, letting you keep tabs on the upload. When it's ready, you'll see a checkmark and an In library notice.
Amazon also has an app for Windows and macOS that lets you do the same thing, as does a Chrome extension, though results are mixed on the latter.
Send Ebooks to the Kindle From Your Phone
If you have the Kindle app installed on your iPhone or Android device, you can add ebooks to your library with a few taps. In the example above, we downloaded an ebook from Project Gutenberg on the iPhone, which saved it to the Files app. We then long-pressed on the ebook, selected Share, and picked the Kindle app in the menu. It then appeared in our library in the Kindle app as well as on our Kindle Paperwhite. The process is similar on Android.
Find Your Kindle Email
Amazon also lets you email ebooks to your Kindle account via a specially crafted email address. To get your Kindle's email address, go to amazon.com/myk using your PC's web browser (or Account & Lists > Content Library > Devices tab). In the list below, find the relevant Kindle device and click it. In the drop-down window, click [your name's] Kindle.
On the next page, you'll see a Device Summary that lists your @kindle.com email address. (It's set to a default address, but you can change it by clicking Edit.)
Back up top, click the Preferences tab and scroll down to Personal Document Settings. Click the down arrow on the right and scroll to Approved Personal Document E-mail List. The email attached to your Amazon account should be listed here. If that's the email address you'll be using to send ebooks to your Kindle, you're all set. To use a different email, click Add a new approved e-mail address and enter the address you want to use. Remember, your Kindle needs to be attached to a Wi-Fi network for this to work.
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Send a PDF to Your Kindle
Amazon can automatically convert PDFs into the Kindle format, but you get two formatting choices. If you want your Kindle to display every page in the PDF as if it were a graphic, just email the .pdf file to your Kindle's address without a subject line, upload it via the Send to Kindle website, or drag and drop the file onto a Kindle that's attached to your PC with a USB cable.
That will maintain the formatting and graphics; it'll appear on your Kindle like it would on your laptop. But the font size may be too small to read. Your other option is to attach the PDF file to an email, and make the subject line "convert"—just that word. Send it to your Kindle email address and your PDF will be converted into a Kindle version that will let you mark it up and change the formatting. The graphics will still be in there as well, but you'll lose the layout of the original PDF.
Where Do My Ebooks Show Up?
Once you've emailed your ebook, go to your Kindle and tap Home > From Your Library. It might take a few minutes, but if your Kindle is connected to Wi-Fi, it should update automatically and the ebook will appear. Want to get rid of the ebook? Tap the three dots on the bottom right of your ebook in Your Library and select Remove download to remove it from your Kindle or Permanently Delete to remove it from your Amazon account.
Where Do I Get Free Ebooks?
To hook into public library catalogs and send ebooks to your Kindle, check out the Libby app from OverDrive. (Hoopla offers a similar service.)
If you want classics, Project Gutenberg has 70,000+ copyright-free ebooks.
For historical and academic texts, check out archive.org.
ManyBooks.net has a mix of free and paid classics and self-published titles.
Free-Ebooks.net has a large collection of self-published ebooks and classics; provide your email address to get five free ebooks per month.
If you like science fiction, the publisher Baen also has a set of free ebooks.
BookBub has a free ebook section filled with romance novels and other casual reads.
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