Kindle devices appeal to many people. When everything works, they’re great. But Amazon is becoming more and more finicky, both in terms of supported formats and the freedom to manage your own books.
Kindle books use their own formats, most of the time with embedded DRM. However, there are oh-so-many ebooks available online, both for purchase and for free, that are not specifically tied to the Kindle ecosystem and your Amazon account.
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Calibre is an open-source ebook management and editing program. In this article, we’re going to use Calibre to go beyond the Kindle format for our ebooks on Kindle.
Install Calibre
To get started, point your browser to the Calibre download page and download the version for your computer. I’ll be using the Mac version from now on.
Once installed, there are a few simple, if confusing, steps necessary to get started with Calibre. First, launch the application. You’ll see a setup screen like this.
On this screen, you’re going to want to choose an empty directory where you want to keep all your Calibre documents and settings. Make sure the folder exists and is empty, then select it using the Change button.
Once you’ve done that, click Next. Here, you’ll see a screen that lets you choose your destination device. Your choice here affects the formatting produced during conversions, the fonts that are used or embedded, image and layout adjustments, and some other formatting features.
You can probably keep the setting on Kindle Basic, but if you’re using a Fire or one of the larger Kindles, you might want to select that as your option. When done, click Next.
This screen determines whether Calibre delivers books to you via email. I prefer to leave it all blank, but you’re welcome to experiment with it. Go ahead and click Next.
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Finally, there’s the Finish screen. You can open the links for additional help and training or just click Finish to complete the setup process.
Okay, now you’re ready to convert some books!
Calibre’s format options
On Calibre’s ebook format conversion page, it says it supports the following input formats:
- AZW, AZW3, AZW4, CBZ, CBR, CB7, CBC, CHM, DJVU, DOCX, EPUB, FB2, FBZ, HTML, HTMLZ, LIT, LRF, MOBI, ODT, PDF, PRC, PDB, PML, RB, RTF, SNB, TCR, TXT, TXTZ
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It also supports the following output formats:
- AZW3, EPUB, DOCX, FB2, HTMLZ, OEB, LIT, LRF, MOBI, PDB, PMLZ, RB, PDF, RTF, SNB, TCR, TXT, TXTZ, ZIP
For our purposes, we’re going to see if we can convert EPUB and DOC/DOCX files to MOBI, PDF, AZW, or AZW3. Then we’ll see which formats turn out better on the new-generation and old-generation devices.
The basic conversion process
We’re going to start by converting an EPUB document to MOBI. I bought and downloaded the book Potus from Smashwords as an EPUB.
Potus was written by ZDNET’s own Jack Wallen and tells the story of a lead singer of a punk band who attempts to defeat the incumbent president. As Jack tells it, the motto of the singer is “Make America Punk Again.” I mean, this is why we read books, right?
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If you don’t have Calibre open, open it now. You’ll see a screen that looks like this. Go ahead and click the Add Books button in the upper left corner of the screen.
Navigate to your EPUB and open it. You’ll see a screen like this, with some of the metadata displayed. Now click the Convert Books button, located two icons to the right of the Open Books button we just clicked.
You’ll be presented with an editing screen that, by default, takes up your full screen real estate. Resize it to something more manageable.
On the left (at 1) is an indicator that shows you the format Calibre thinks your ebook is in when imported. The main action takes place at 2, where you choose an output format. I chose MOBI. Once you’ve picked your output format, click OK (at 3).
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Calibre won’t tell you when it’s finished converting the book. Instead, there’s a little Jobs indicator at the bottom-right corner of the screen. You’ll see a spinning wheel, and when the number is 0, you’ll know you’re done. Hey, remember, this is free software.
Locating your converted books
To find the converted book files that you’re going to send to your Kindle, right-click on the book name in the center library field. Choose Open Book Folder, then Open Book Folder again. This will – wait for it – open the book folder.
As you can see, my folder now has both EPUB and MOBI format files.
Now, go ahead and transfer your book to your Kindle. For more details on how to do that, read my How to sideload EPUBs and other ebooks to your Kindle step-by-step guide.
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Testing formats on an old, unregistered Kindle
So, what can we get from Calibre, and what can it do for us? To that end, I’m testing a series of ebooks and file formats to see what works on a Kindle Keyboard (3rd generation) from 2010. In the next section, I’ll be running the same tests, but sending the files to a current model Kindle.
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To recap from my sideloading guide, I found that the old Kindle wouldn’t accept EPUB or DOC files. It did fine with Denise’s Kindle-native AZW and AZW3 (as long as they were not DRM-protected), as well as PDFs and MOBI.
After using the conversion process described above to go from EPUB to MOBI, Jack’s book made it just fine to my old, unregistered Kindle.
I was also able to successfully convert a DOCX to MOBI. Calibre would not convert a DOC file, but you can easily open such a file in Word or Google Docs and save it as a DOCX. Then run that through Calibre.
Finally, I tried the two AZW files. The DRM-free AZW3 file converted to MOBI just fine. You don’t really need to convert DRM-free AZW or AZW3 files. I just wanted to see what would happen.
But the AZW file, which was DRM-locked to my wife’s account, would not convert to MOBI.
Testing formats on a brand-new Kindle
You can send an EPUB to your current model Kindle using Amazon’s Send to Kindle page<!–>, but not via USB. However, when I connected my Kindle to USB and used the techniques described in the sideloading article, I was able to transfer and read Jack’s MOBI file just fine.
I was also able to transfer the DOCX file, once converted to MOBI.
But why not just use the Send to Kindle service? I don’t know about you, but I don’t like the idea of sending all my documents through Amazon’s cloud. I also get documents that are embargoed or otherwise governed by a non-disclosure agreement or security clearance, and those can’t be shared via the cloud.
By moving those files to a new format and sideloading them via USB, it’s now possible to read them on the Kindle.
But what about my own DRM-locked Kindle books?
There are a couple of DRM-removal tools for Kindle books, both on GitHub. As an exercise, I tried DeDRM and NoDRM on my PC without success.
In some of the GitHub Issues discussions, I found a suggestion to use a special standalone Windows application that is no longer available. Users said it was the only way to save files from the Kindle repository that would work with the DRM removal tool.
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Since Amazon has removed the ability to download Kindle files, I’m guessing that DRM-locked files downloaded as a backup directly from the Amazon website before the cutoff date are not (at least until someone cracks them) going to be workable on your old or unregistered Kindles.
In the meantime, there are tons of great ebooks available in EPUB and other formats that you can convert and download to your current model or even old, unregistered Kindle devices.
How’s it working for you?
Have you tried using Calibre to convert ebooks to a format readable by your Kindle? What challenges have you faced with format compatibility?
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Do you prefer sideloading books via USB, or do you rely on Amazon’s cloud services? Have you successfully read EPUB or DOCX files on your Kindle after conversion? Share your experiences in the comments below.
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