If you have ever gotten an ebook that you can read on your Kindle, but you didn’t buy it or obtain it from Amazon, don’t worry. Placing it on your Kindle is quite easy.
I recently gave away Kindle books of mine, and I was surprised to see 80% of the people who downloaded them wrote me back asking how to put it on their Kindle device. Some even searched for software to use to “convert” the file to another file type they assumed it needed to be in order to work on their Kindle device.
First thing’s first
Take a deep breath, relax, and just plug your Kindle in to your computer. Make sure your computer recognizes that your device is plugged in. Then import the mobi file(s) to the “documents” folder on your Kindle and you should have no problem.
If you don’t have a Kindle device but instead use one of their free apps on your smartphone or tablet, click on the file, and designate it to open with the Kindle app on that mobile device.
These are both methods I use frequently with e-books that I didn’t get directly from Amazon.
Send it to Your Kindle From your Amazon Account
If that doesn’t work, or is too complicated for you, or you want to have the book in your Kindle library across all your devices and apps and not just your Kindle, then try this: Sign into your Amazon account make sure you know what your Kindle email address is. I’m not talking about what email address you use for your Amazon account for making purchase, but what is the unique email address Amazon has given you for your Kindle documents.
To find out what that is,
- Login to Amazon and go to “Manage Your Kindle” – www.amazon.com/myk
- Click on the tab link for “Settings”
- Scroll down to where you see “Personal document settings” and you’ll see a list of all your registered Kindle devices and apps, along with a corresponding email that has the word “kindle” in it. You can e-mail personal documents to your device using the e-mail address(es) shown.
It seems that each device or app has a different email address, but I’ve noticed whenever I send a PDF or Word document to just the one email address, it usually shows up in my account cloud, allowing me to download it to each device. However, whenever I make highlights in my tablet or Paperwhite, they don’t show up in the other device when I sync as often as I’d like it to.
TrainingAuthors.com has more on how you can use this feature to add approved email addresses to this list so as to receive documents from other people straight to your device.
Read it here: How to Send a Kindle MOBI Review Copy Directly to a Kindle Device.
Now email it to device
Once you’re all set up, head to www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle, and pick the option you want to use. On this particular link page you can send it to Kindle apps on your Android or iOS phone, as well as Mac and PC apps.
You can also just log in to you email client, attach the document in in as e-mail attachment, and send it to the email address you obtained in the steps above, and voila — you’ve emailed it to your device and can begin reading it as fast as you would if you downloaded a book directly from Amazon.
Find more information about Send-to-Kindle e-mail here: www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/email.
If you have a Kindle Fire tablet or something else, this link might help but only if you’re comfortable side-loading files to your device: Three Easy Ways to Load Non-Amazon Books on Your Kindle Fire.
However, I find the above steps much easier and less complicated than side loading on my Kindle Fire device.
Now you Know!
And that you know how to put non-Amazon ebooks on your Kindle, you won’t need to try converting the file into something else, usually against the copyright holder’s stipulations and to the wasting of a lot of your time trying to figure out how to use the shady software.
Check out this recent article on The Insider for other Kindle expert tips and tricks:
Click on the photo below to learn how to increase your Audible library on the cheap.
