Got an old Kindle? How to resurrect it from the dead with fresh ebooks

Amazon / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET

Early 2025 was a tough time for Kindle fans.

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On Feb. 26, 2025, Amazon disabled the ability to download Kindle book files to your computer. While Kindle books will no longer be available for your old devices after next week, you can upload EPUB (with a workaround) and mobi files. Here’s how to do that.

Of course, it all starts with a story

As a tech professional, there are many things I know because I know them. But I also learn things because it’s my job to fix the tech problems around the house. In this case, my wife had performed a factory reset on her cherished Kindle DX, which she purchased almost exactly ten years ago. After the reset, she couldn’t get any of her books to download.

She wanted to clean the Kindle of all its cruft. Every book she ever bought, up until the last time she powered up the machine, had been on that device before the reset. She thought a factory reset would be the fastest way to start with a clean slate.

It was indeed a clean slate. All that was left was a dictionary and user guide, both installed as part of the reset process. She couldn’t download anything else she wanted on it.

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I don’t use Kindles nearly as much as she does. I have one entry-level Kindle, which I read in the biologitorium, but that’s about it. I like keeping a Kindle there because it’s always available and nearly always has enough charge for bio-break sessions.

As for my wife’s Kindle DX issue, it took a bit of Googling to figure out that the DX never supported Wi-Fi. The device did, however, come with full-time 3G cellular support, which is how she had loaded books on it throughout the years.

Read that last paragraph and note that I’m writing this article in 2025, not 2014. In 2014, we had 3G. By 2025, most of the major carriers in the US have shut down their 3G networks. Amazon has also phased out support of 3G for the Kindle Generation 1, Kindle Generation 2, and Kindle DX.

That left us with the question of how to get books back on her cherished DX. The Kindle DX has a 9.7-inch display. While she does have a more modern Kindle she could use, it’s not that big. Amazon does make the 10.2-inch Scribe<!–>, but at $419, she’d rather keep using the DX, especially since it’s in perfectly workable condition.

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Warning: Do not unregister your old Kindle

In the process of finding out how to put books back on that discontinued device, I learned some things that people with older devices may need to know. I also learned one thing that, if you do it, you can’t really recover from.

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Here’s a quick summary of what I found out:

You can’t transfer books wirelessly to the Kindle 1, Kindle 2, and DX anymore.
You can download ebooks (but not Kindle ebooks) to your computer and then upload them to the discontinued devices via USB.
If you still have the obsolete Kindle registered to your device and downloaded Kindle books before the download cutoff in February, any Kindle books you downloaded should be compatible.
But if you have to download Kindle books using a more modern device registration, newer books will only download in a more modern file format that is incompatible with older Kindles.

So, if you ever want to use an older Kindle, never, ever unregister it. Likewise, you won’t be able to gift that older Kindle to someone else, because they won’t be able to register it.

Gather your USB cables

For those Kindles where wireless connectivity is no longer supported, you’ll need to turn to USB. All Kindles, from Generation 1 on, can be turned into mountable USB drives via their USB connection.

My wife’s Kindle DX uses a micro-USB connector, as does the Generation 2 Kindle. The Generation 1 Kindle uses a mini-USB connector. To mount the device to your computer as a drive, connect the Kindle to your computer over USB.

Also: Also: The best reading tablets of 2025: Expert tested and recommended

We found out that not all cables will work. We tried two cables that were known to work with other devices, but the Kindle didn’t respond. It wasn’t until we tried a third cable that it properly responded. Here are cables that should work, one made by Monoprice<!–>, and one from Amazon Basics–>. Beyond that, I don’t have any guidance for how to pick a cable, but if at first it doesn’t work, try, try again with different cables. My other big tip is to check for the “Free Returns” mention right under the price.

We tested the connection on both a Windows 11 machine and her M2 MacBook Air. Once we found the right cable, this process worked in both environments. I’ll show you screenshots from a Mac because that’s her daily driver.

Once the cable is connected, you’ll get a permissions request on your computer like this: